


Aim High

by astralelegies



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (but that's not the main focus), Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Gen, Light Angst, M/M, Mostly Silliness, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Pining, Slow Burn, what do you mean Found Family isn't an Ao3 tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25320034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralelegies/pseuds/astralelegies
Summary: When Zuko—reformed jerk and reluctant academic prodigy—is assigned to be Aang’s new math tutor, none of his friends are too happy about it, least of all Sokka and Katara. But as Sokka and the rest of the Gaang grudgingly get to know their latest co-conspirator, they find that who Zuko is, who he was, and who theythoughthe was might be very different people indeed.Featuring friendship, healing, low-level hijinks, teen angst, teen romance, bad nicknames, high school theater, and 100% of your daily recommended sass intake.
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 135
Kudos: 793
Collections: avatar tingz





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The last time I wrote a High School AU, I was barely out of high school myself. Times change, but I guess taste in fanfic stays the same

Sokka greeted the sound of his morning alarm with as much enthusiasm as he could ever muster—a groan, followed by rolling over onto his side and squeezing his eyes shut to try and convince himself it’d be alright if he laid in bed for another five minutes, before guiltily sitting up and blinking his eyes in the brightness. ( _Note to self_ , he thought, _get better shades_.)

This particular morning he was less eager than he might usually have been to stay in bed. With the mixture of dread and excitement that can only accompany the arrival of a new school year, Sokka began running his first mental list of the day to make sure he had everything he needed prepared. Backpack filled with all his supplies? Check. Schedule printed out and pulled up on his phone in case he forgot what class he was going to or got lost wandering around the same school he’d attended for four years? Check. His signature snarky attitude? Double check.

“You sure you don’t want to leave that last one at home?”

His younger sister, Katara, smirked at him from the doorway, and it was only then that Sokka realized in his sleep-addled state he’d recited the entire list aloud.

Next to her, Aang’s head popped into view. “It’s okay, Sokka, I like your snarky attitude.”

Sokka threw his hands in the air. “I give up. You know what? It’s never too early in the day to decide to give up.”

“You’d better not catch Dad hear you saying that.” Katara tugged him by the arm out into the hallway. “And speaking of Dad, he made pancakes, so hurry up and have some breakfast before we’re all late.”

Sokka threw on some clothes before joining the others at the table. The pancakes were enough to pacify him, and as he scarfed down his meal, his brain had time to wander back to the day ahead. It was his final year before college, which supposedly came with the right to run the school and the inevitable “senior slide,” though Sokka was suspicious as to whether this year would really be any more relaxed than those previous. Meanwhile, Katara was entering her junior year, and Aang would be a sophomore. When Hakoda was reminded of this, it prompted a lengthy and embarrassing monologue at how much they’d all grown up, which made Katara’s ears redden, and which Sokka only pretended to scoff at.

Though not technically related to either of them, Aang had become something like a younger brother to the pair of siblings ever since he first came from overseas to start middle school as an exchange student. He’d been matched with a host family at random, but if you ever got Aang talking on the subject he’d always claim there was more to it than that.

“You know, I was really scared to leave home and come here,” he’d told Sokka once, “but you and Katara are like my best friends. I think it was meant to be.”

Sokka thought Aang was probably just spouting off more of the type of thing those monks he’d grown up with had taught him, but he supposed it was a nice idea.

This morning, rather than making pronouncements on fate or friendship, Aang was complainingly loudly about the indignity of having to be assigned a math tutor by the school, thanks to a less than stellar performance in his freshman geometry class the previous year. Because Aang did generally well in his other subjects, the administration had given him a choice: commit to getting his grades up this year, or retake the class.

“I thought geometry was going to be fun because you get to draw pictures. Turns out, the teacher doesn’t like it when you draw a bunch of quadrilaterals fighting each other instead of finishing your test on time.”

He was still talking about the same subject when they arrived at school.

“You’re good at math, right Sokka? Why can’t you tutor me? Or what about Katara?”

“Because we already have enough to do after school.”

Katara shot him a glare—she was never too busy for Aang—so Sokka amended the statement. “I mean, both of us are happy to help you with your homework whenever you want, but it’s not like either of us has ever tutored anyone before. And Katara’s only a year above you in math. You need someone who’s already mastered the high school material. My guess is they’ll con some local college student into doing it.”

They were standing in one of the main halls, clustered around Aang’s locker during the last few minutes before the first bell rang. He wouldn’t let up about the tutoring issue.

“Why does math have to be required for so many years of school anyway?” he grumbled. “Why not Home Ec? That’s more useful.”

“You’re just saying that because you like getting to cook during class.”

“And doing crafts. Last year I made Katara a skirt.” Aang frowned. “Hey, do you still have that?”

“Of course!” said Katara, reddening a little. Aang’s sewing skills were a work in progress, but even though Katara had never actually worn the skirt so far, Sokka knew for a fact she still kept it hanging in her closet with all the others.

“I thought I smelled nerd when I walked in here.”

Sokka swiveled around to see Toph, the only other member of their friend group who enjoyed sarcasm as much as he did, grinning up at them.

“So what’s up? What’s Aang complaining about this time?”

“Math class,” he said, and Toph gave a groan of commiseration.

“Honestly, why can’t they let us choose classes based on what’s actually going to be applicable to our futures?”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

“I don’t see what you guys are complaining about,” said Katara, “math isn’t that bad.”

“Easy for you to say, Miss Pre-Pre-Med.”

As the bickering continued, Sokka felt someone ram into him from behind and twisted out of the way before he could be tackled to the ground.

“Hey you!”

“Suki!”

“The one and only.”

She threw her arms around him, and Toph coughed loudly.

“Okay, break it up, you two.”

Sokka stuck his tongue out at her and then turned back to Suki, slinging an arm around her shoulders. “You coming to lunch today?”

“I can’t,” she said, giving an exaggerated frown, “I have to meet with Coach Kiyoshi about tryouts this year.”

“Boo.”

“But hey, check this.” She pulled a slip of paper out of her back pocket. “Who do you have for homeroom?”

They walked on, Katara trailing along with Aang and Toph behind her, all comparing schedules. Sokka, engrossed in figuring out which parts of Suki’s schedule matched his own, did not notice that the rest of the group had come to a stop several feet behind him until he bumped against someone’s arm.

“Watch it, idiot.”

He looked up to see Mai glaring darkly at him, and backed off a few paces.

“Sorry, your gothfulness.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but turned back around to continue talking to her friend Ty Lee. Sokka scanned his surroundings, but thankfully caught no sight of their ringleader to complete the trio.

“Seriously,” said Katara, catching up to him, “do you ever look where you’re going?”

Sokka made a rude sound and ignored her. Glancing around again, he saw Zuko standing at his locker down at the other end of the hall. He had his back turned to Mai and Ty Lee, and was bent over his bookbag, absorbed with rearranging its contents.

“It’s still weird seeing them apart,” said Katara, following his gaze. “The four of them used to be like a matched set.”

He nodded, remembering. Azula, Zuko’s tyrannical little sister, had run their pack for years, while the other three went along with whatever her whim happened to be at the time: Ty Lee enthusiastically, Mai with a pointed air of boredom, and Zuko scowling and complaining all the way through. He still scowled out of habit, but now he wanted nothing to do with any of them—or, seemingly, anyone. Not that Sokka or the rest of his friends were keen to invite him out of his solitude, having spent too long bearing the brunt of Azula’s schemes. He turned back to Suki.

“Looks like we have homeroom together,” he said. “Come on, let’s go.”

All things considered it was an uneventful morning, despite the fact that it was his last first day of high school. Sokka wasn’t particularly sentimental about that, but it did feel weird that he only had one more year left in this place. Ever since Aang came to stay with his family, only a few years after Sokka’s mom died, he’d felt like his life was falling into place. Now he and Katara had not just Aang, but Suki and Toph and other friends too by their side. High school might be mostly lame, but at least they were able to get through it together.

 _Now that does sound sentimental_ , he thought, and turned his attention to scouting out a good lunch table for the group. He spotted Toph and Aang already sitting at a spot near the back wall, and shortly after Sokka sat down they were joined by Katara, eager to show them the syllabus for her anatomy and physiology class. She and Toph were just settling into a good-natured argument about something that went over Sokka’s head when Aang tapped him on the shoulder and pointed across the room.

“Is it just me, or does it look like Zuko is walking this way?”

Sokka followed the line of his finger and saw that Zuko did indeed seem to be headed in their general direction. But—

“He can’t be coming towards us, right?”

At that, Toph turned away from Katara. “What are you guys looking at?”

“Zuko’s walking over to us,” said Aang.

“That can’t be right.”

Now he’d captured Katara’s attention too. A hush fell over the table as they watched Zuko’s approach.

“He's not turning around,” Aang whispered, which they could all see for themselves without him pointing it out (except for Toph, but she didn't need the hint either). “He's—yeah, he's stopping in front of our table.”

Zuko barely managed to restrain an eyeroll. “I'm right here, you know.”

“Zuko.” Sokka scratched the back of his head. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Mind if I sit with you?”

He was met by four blank sets of eyes. Sokka and Aang's mouths were both hanging open a little. He sighed.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

Toph was the first one to recover herself enough to speak. “Sure, I guess. I mean, not like we care, right guys?”

Katara looked the other way. Aang looked down at his food, and Sokka shrugged. Zuko plopped his tray down next to him. “I'll take that as a yes.”

He started eating without taking much notice of any of them, pausing only to look around at them all midway through scarfing down his sandwich. “What?”

Sokka realized they were all still staring at him (well, again except for Toph), but couldn't bring himself to turn his head away.

“You've just…never eaten lunch with us before.” _And you used to claim you hated our guts._

It wasn't that Zuko had mellowed out since then, but he'd stopped hanging around his even-more-evil sister, and he seemed a lot more sure of himself since the debacle last year. Sokka didn't like to think about it—didn’t know much about it, really, except that the former human incarnation of angst had decided to apologize out of the blue to Aang & the Gang for the years of less-than-polite remarks, before disappearing from school for a few weeks, his eventual return accompanied by rumors of calls to social services, an ugly custody battle, his father's name spread across the gossip column. Zuko never said anything about why he'd decided to move in with his uncle, or why Azula was allowed to stay with his dad, and no one in the school dared to ask. Still, his dubiously-reformed ways combined with the fact that they'd all grown older and (marginally) more mature since the days of childhood taunting had slowly led the Gaang to regard him with something less than the usual hostility, though they were still on edge whenever he happened to be around.

“If you have a problem with that, I'll leave,” said Zuko, matter-of-factly, and Sokka's thoughts snapped back to the present.

“No, of course not. It's just…well it's unusual for you, don't you think?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

There were a few more minutes of uncomfortable silence, until at last Zuko finished his sandwich and cleared his throat.

“Look,” he said, “I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but the school assigned me to be Aang’s new math tutor.”

“ _What_?”

This from both Katara and Aang simultaneously. Zuko continued. “I think they’re sending out the official email later today, but I wanted to warn you in advance, so you’d have the chance to think about it.”

“And you agreed to this?”

Katara was glaring at Zuko. He shot her a look of exasperation in response.

“It’s not like I had much choice. I still have to do forty hours of community service before the administration will clear my academic record.”

“And whose fault is that?” Sokka mumbled, ducking behind Toph as Zuko leveled a frown at him.

“I’m not here to start a fight. I’m just letting you know.”

With that, he picked up his tray and stalked off, leaving the rest of them to carry on gaping at one another. Toph was the first to speak.

“Well,” she said, “I’m glad I’m not Aang.”

“Thanks, Toph.”

Katara’s face, Sokka thought, looked like a volcano, or maybe a pot of mac n’ cheese about to boil over. ( _And now I want mac n’ cheese_ , he thought, staring glumly down at his half-eaten bowl of last night’s leftovers.)

When Katara finally did open her mouth to speak, the only words she was able to muster were, “Did that really just happen?”

“Sounds like it,” Toph said, and Aang heaved a dramatic sigh.

It was at that point Sokka knew it was going to be a long semester.

* * *

Later that day, after the final bell had rung, Aang sulked throughout the entirety of their car ride home. He stared morosely at the clouds outside his window, and didn’t even bother to point out which ones were shaped like his dog-slash-best-friend, Appa. Katara kept glancing back at him, and though her expression was a mask, Sokka could see her grip on the steering wheel tighten. He knew that as soon as Aang was safely out of earshot, he’d be in for a venting session.

Sure enough, after Aang had been packed off to his room to go over his syllabi, Katara rounded on him in the kitchen.

“What is the administration thinking?”

Hands on her hips, wearing the same stubborn glare that used to be their mother’s—Sokka knew that when he grew old and his mind began to fray around the edges, this is how he’d still remember her.

“I mean, after everything that happened last year, and after clearly _ignoring_ all the roughhousing and the warning signs before that, they think it’s okay to just put him in charge of someone else’s learning? And that someone is _Aang_?"

“He has been at the top of our class for two years in a row,” Sokka said, and then held up a hand as she began a retort. “I mean I agree with you! But I’m just saying, if Aang wants to get his grades up…”

“That’s not the point. Zuko isn’t the only person in this school who can do a little algebra.”

“You’re right about that.” Sokka sighed. “And I can’t pretend I’m not still angry too, about everything that happened in the past. At the same time, though, thinking back on it all I wonder how we could’ve been so unaware of his situation.”

“Just because he has a tragic backstory doesn’t make up for all the years he spent being an asshole.”

Sokka grabbed the swear jar off the counter next to him, and Katara dropped a quarter in before continuing. “I know he was going through a lot, but it’s not like either of us had a perfect childhood either.”

“Well, we did call him names too.”

“He started it!” Now it was Katara’s turn to sigh, the indignation on her face fading slightly. “Sorry, that was probably uncalled for. I guess I’m just confused. Like, what was that all about at lunch? Does he want to be friends now? He’s gotta know that’s never happening.”

“I’m not sure.” Sokka paused, thinking over Zuko’s odd behavior for what felt like the hundredth time that day. “Maybe he’s just trying to show us he’s changed.”

“As long as he’s not eating lunch with Azula, I suppose. But I wish he’d just leave us alone.”

“Yeah.”

After that, Hakoda came back from work and announced it was Aang’s night to help him with dinner while Sokka and Katara did the dishes. Normally, Sokka looked forward to when it was Aang’s night—the kid liked to try out all sorts of international recipes, and even at fifteen he wasn’t a half-bad cook, though occasionally his dishes were a little too experimental. But tonight, Sokka’s mind was elsewhere, and he hardly seemed to taste anything he ate. This did not escape his father’s notice.

“You’re all awfully quiet tonight. Did something happen on your first day?”

Aang just picked at his food, so Katara said, “Do you remember Zuko, Azula’s older brother?”

A frown bloomed on Hakoda’s face. “I remember he never got along well with you kids. Why?”

“Well, he’s been better about that recently, but now he’s been assigned as Aang’s math tutor for the semester.”

“I see.” His frown deepened. “Aang, how do you feel about this?”

“Not great.” He looked up from his plate. “I was kind of hoping the start of the new school year would be a little more relaxed.”

“Do you want me to call the principal?”

“No.” Aang sighed, but he seemed more resolute than he had earlier in the afternoon. “It’s not that bad. I think Zuko really has changed, and maybe he won’t be such a bad tutor. I’m just not looking forward to it.”

Hakoda clapped him on the back. “Well, I’m proud of you for being willing to tough it out. But seriously, you ever need that phone call, just let me know.”

After dinner and cleanup were finished, Sokka’s dad put forward the idea of an impromptu movie night. Aang and Katara were on board, but Sokka wanted to call Suki first and debrief. She offered to come sneak in through his bedroom window for some consolation, but he waved her off.

“Don’t you have the first meeting for your running club at seven tomorrow?”

“What are girlfriends for?”

All the same, being far from an early riser himself, Sokka would hate for Suki to miss out on a few hours of sleep on his account, and especially not over something so trivial. And that was what he kept trying to remind himself—that this wasn’t a big deal, not really. Zuko was just another classmate of his that, the history between them aside, he’d in all likelihood part ways with at the end of this school year, never to see one another again (except perhaps for an awkward run-in at the grocery store a few years down the line when they were both home on break from college). As long as they kept their distance and Zuko had truly mended his former-jerk ways, they could get by until then being perfectly civil to one another, with no need for all this confusion.

But as much as he tried, Sokka couldn’t shake his unease, and he knew Katara and Aang must be having the same dilemma.

It turned out to be a restless night for all three of them, and instead of feeling relieved at the arrival of a new day, Sokka found himself dreading going back to school and facing up to all the weirdness. He waited with baited breath all throughout his morning classes, hardly paying attention to anything his teachers were saying (and yeah, Katara was totally going to scold him for that later).

At lunch the rest of his friends were likewise on edge, though as the minutes crept by and Zuko had yet to make an appearance, they began to relax a little. Suki had been able to join them today, and was making an admirable effort to distract their attention with a story about a particularly close game the women’s softball team had won during her freshman year (thanks, of course, to her help). Normally, Sokka hung on every word that came out of Suki’s mouth, but for some reason he found both his mind and his gaze wandering. He didn’t know quite what he was looking for until his eyes landed on Zuko, all the way across the cafeteria.

He was sitting alone, separate from the group of giggling freshman girls occupying the other end of his table. He didn’t seem to pay them any mind, frowning down at his food with headphones jammed over his ears. _Serves him right_ , Sokka thought, and then to his surprise felt a pang of guilt. Did Zuko really deserve to be friendless, now that he’d owned up to the wrongs he’d done and freed himself of his former bad influences?

 _No_ , Sokka decided, making peace with himself. _But that doesn’t mean he needs to be friends with us._ Satisfied with that distinction, he turned back to Suki to continue listening.

They almost made it the full lunch period without Zuko making a repeated attempt at contact, but five minutes before the bell rang, Katara spotted him walking across the cafeteria.

“Uh-oh guys, red alert.”

Aang groaned, but at least he tried to look neutral enough as Zuko approached them.

“Hey,” he said, addressing Aang directly and not bothering to glance at the rest of them. “We have to figure out a schedule before we can start your tutoring. Are you free Tuesdays?”

Aang cast him what was probably supposed to be a glower but looked like more of a pout. “I have Art Club.”

“Wednesdays?”

“That’s karate.”

Zuko growled. “Well you’re gonna have to find sometime afterschool that works, or else transfer math classes.”

Glancing between them, Sokka knew he had to think fast. He clapped his hands together, and everyone at the table swiveled around to stare at him.

“Alright, listen up you two. Aang, I know Zuko isn’t your first-choice tutor, but since there’s nothing we can do about that, if you want to make this work you’re going to have sacrifice some of your club time. Zuko, if you want to get on Aang’s good side and prove to us that you’re not a total jerk anymore, then you’re going to have to be flexible. I’m thinking it over, and if Aang rotates which club meetings he attends each week, he can still have fun with his extracurriculars while also making time for studying. Katara and I are here afterschool most days anyway, so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to drive him home when you’re done.”

There was a tense pause in which Sokka could feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on him, and then Zuko shrugged. “Works for me.”

“Aang?”

He still looked pouty, but after a nudge from Katara he nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll leave it up to you guys to decide when you want to start, and then form a plan from there.”

“Alright!” Toph pumped a fist in the air. “Day two and Mr. Plan is back in action.”

“Please tell me that’s not my new nickname.”

* * *

Later that night after an unenthusiastic conversation with Aang, Sokka did draw up a plan for the tutoring sessions, and once his friend’s approval had been granted he pulled out his phone and hesitated over the contacts list. Earlier, he and Zuko had begrudgingly swapped numbers in order to stay organized about the situation, but just like sitting at the same lunch table, texting Zuko felt like crossing a line. They weren’t enemies anymore—and “enemies” was such a childish word anyway—but that didn’t make them friends, or even friendly acquaintances. What was it Katara had said? _That’s never happening._

Still, emailing him the schedule felt weirdly formal, like something one of those “young professionals,” the ones who wore ties to class and always said “I’ll check my GCal” when you asked to hang out with them, would do. So he clicked on Zuko’s icon and spent a few minutes trying to figure out what wording would be the most appropriate.

 **Sokka (8:11):** _here’s the schedule I made for aang’s tutoring, it should cover everything through the end of the month_

 **Sokka (8:11):** _[File attached]_

 **Crown Prince Zuko the Angsty (8:16):** _Toph was right, you are Mr. Plan_

 **Sokka (8:17):** _rude!_

 **Sokka (8:17):** _then I guess that makes you mr. jerkface_

(Complimenting himself on his cleverness, Sokka decided to enter that into his phone as Zuko’s new screen name, since “Crown Prince Zuko the Angsty” was really too long.)

 **Mr. Jerkface (8:19):** _Relax. I’m kidding._

Sokka put his phone down in a huff. To his surprise, a few seconds later it buzzed again.

 **Mr. Jerkface (8:20):** _I’m sorry. I know this situation isn’t ideal, and it isn’t what any of you wanted. I don’t want to be an inconvenience to you._

For the life of him, Sokka couldn’t think of what to say to that. Finally, he replied, _We’ll make it work_ , and then, as long as you do your part to help with that. And then he put his phone on silent, deciding he deserved to take a break from the confusion for at least a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this story was not exactly inspired by the song “Aim High” by Taiwanese musician 9m88, but it did come on shuffle while I was feeling morose about how notoriously bad a title-writer I am. Anyway, it’s definitely worth a listen if you’d like to check it out.


	2. Chapter 2

If Aang and his friends were unhappy about Zuko’s new volunteer gig, they likely couldn’t imagine what Zuko himself was feeling. And for his part, Zuko wasn’t entirely sure either—he was frustrated by the administration but accustomed to being let down, unenthused at the prospect of trying to hold Aang’s attention for a full two hours twice every week, and at the same time was embarrassed on Aang’s behalf about his own involvement in the whole thing. He’d been put in an awkward position: last year, after coming to terms with himself about all his past misdeeds, he’d gotten up the guts to apologize for everything he’d done, and after that came…nothing. Not that he’d expected Aang or any of the others to reach out—they had every right to ignore him and his meager attempt at reconciliation—but without a sign from them, Zuko had felt uncomfortable trying to force himself into their good graces. Now, it seemed, high school was doing the forcing for him.

He held in a sigh, reviewing again the stack of materials he’d prepared for their first tutoring session. There were still three minutes left before the agreed-upon meeting time, but Zuko had a feeling Aang was going to be late.

As predicted, Aang ambled in around 3:35, wearing a guilty expression he was making a poor attempt at hiding. What Zuko had not expected was Sokka, who came in behind Aang and sauntered over to the table he’d staked out in the study hall classroom.

“I’m here to watch.”

“Uh…okay, sure.”

“I don’t _want_ to be here babysitting,” Sokka added, as though that point needed clarification. “Katara was going to come, but she had a last minute meeting with a teacher, so you get me instead.”

Zuko decided not to comment on that, and instead turned to Aang. “Are you ready to start?”

Aang nodded, pulling out a notebook and pencil, and they set to work.

Having never been a math tutor before, Zuko wasn’t quite sure how this was supposed to go. He figured it’d probably be a good idea to begin by getting a baseline of Aang’s level and work from there, so he’d written out a short quiz with two sections, one reviewing the geometry concepts Aang was supposed to have learned last year, and one containing some basic algebraic principles that he’d need for this year’s classwork.

Zuko had budgeted half an hour of their time for the quiz, but it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to work.

“I don’t get this one.” Aang frowned down at the paper. “Can you tell me what I should do?”

“Just give it your best shot,” Zuko said. “It doesn’t matter if you get it wrong, I only want to get a sense of what you know already.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be _helping_ him with the math part?”

Zuko ignored Sokka, and said to Aang, “I’ll turn off the timer so you won’t have to worry about it, but try to work fast so we can move on to the rest of the lesson plan after.”

“But I don’t know how to do this problem.”

“The kid has a point,” said Sokka.

“Can we please just concentrate on the task at hand.”

“I have more important things to do than stare at a bunch of questions I don’t know how to solve,” Aang insisted.

“And I have more important things to do than sit here and tutor you,” said Zuko. “Looks like we’re even.”

He heard a sharp laugh from the table next to them and scowled at Sokka. “What’s so funny?”

“This whole tutoring thing is going about as well as I expected.”

“Well maybe Aang and I could concentrate if you stopped interrupting us.”

There was a tense moment of silence, broken by Aang.

“Actually,” he said slowly, “this might sound weird, Sokka, but I think he’s right. Zuko and I might be able to focus our energy better with less people around.”

Sokka made a dramatic gesture, as though he’d been shot through heart. “Betrayed by my own friend.”

“It’s just so we can get through the quiz,” Aang insisted. “Why don’t you go find Katara and see if she’s done with her meeting?”

“Oh no.” Sokka shook his head vehemently. “If she learns I skipped out on you two I’m done for.” He paused. “I’ll just go wait in the hall and keep a lookout.”

With his absence, Zuko did find his thoughts began to run a little clearer. It was less pressure trying to put on the appearance of being a good tutor for only one person.

After a moment, Aang said, “That got kinda heated. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

“Can I start from the beginning of the quiz again?”

“Sure.”

Once Zuko had resigned himself to throwing away the time limit, the rest of the session passed fairly uneventfully. Aang quietly worked his way through Zuko’s problem sets, and when he was finished they went over the answers together. He might be easily distracted, but Aang was a smart kid—creative, in his way—and Zuko figured that as long as he could make math seem like something interesting rather than a chore, they might stand to make some real progress. When they were finished, Aang even gifted him a hesitant smile, though it faded a little when Sokka ducked back inside, his sister following close behind.

“Look, Katara,” Aang said, “we managed to get through the whole session without burning anything down.”

Instead of laughing, she took a step closer to Zuko. “Can I talk to you?” When her friends didn’t move, she gave them both a pointed look. “Alone?”

Before Zuko had time to answer, Sokka and Aang were already outside the door.

“I’m going to be honest with you.”

From the expression on Katara’s face, Zuko decided it would be best to just ride out the monologue and then move on.

“I know you say you’ve changed,” she said, “and that you claim to be sorry for what you’ve done in the past. Now might even be your chance to prove that with more than just words, but your track record doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. All those years of backhanded comments, getting into arguments and picking fights? The way everything you did was always some kind of contest? If you struggled to be a better person before, I don’t see how that’s going to stop now, and even if I sympathize with the hardships you’ve been through, I can’t let you hurt Aang. So you’d better handle this tutoring thing really carefully, or the principal’s only a phone call away.”

Speech finished, she looked at him expectantly. When Zuko was silent, she scowled at him. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

He paused. “You don’t forgive easily. Neither do I. I can respect that.”

Apparently unsatisfied by that answer, Katara only spun away from him without another word, and left to rejoin her friends. Zuko waited a few minutes until he figured the coast was clear before ducking outside the classroom himself.

With his school obligations finished for the day, he walked six blocks along his usual route to the Jasmine Dragon and let himself in through the back door. He tossed his backpack to the side, tied on an apron, and poked his head into the kitchen.

“Uncle, I’m done with school.”

“Your timing is perfect.” Uncle Iroh fixed him with the type of smile that meant he was either about to impart great wisdom or convince Zuko to do something he didn’t like. “I need someone to stand at the register.”

Ah, so it was the latter.

In between ringing up the occasional customer, Zuko allowed his mind to wander. He’d been coming to his uncle’s tea shop to help out after class nearly every day since he started high school, a thought which never failed to remind him of how much he’d changed in the interim—he hoped, despite what Katara had said, for the better. At fifteen, he’d been angry, hard-headed, prone to lashing out, and despite his star-pupil status, those outbursts were responsible for all of the community service hours he now had to wade through. To their credit, the school administration preferred not to take severe disciplinary action like expulsion or suspension unless absolutely necessary, especially if the student in question was partially responsible for boosting their test scores—and, even more especially, if that student had a particularly powerful and unpleasant parental figure. Lucky Zuko.

Since he’d left his father’s house, it was as though a great weight had been lifted from his chest, as though the veil had fallen before his eyes. _I’m not taking orders from you anymore_. Standing in Uncle Iroh’s shop now, he felt more secure in himself than he ever had, and yet at the same time what was once solid ground was now shifting beneath his feet. He was becoming, emerging, caught in an act of transformation with no way of knowing what lay on the other side—if he’d recognize himself, if he would want to.

He was shaken from his teenage existentialism when the bell above the door rang, and he looked up to see his sister step inside, followed by Mai and Ty Lee.

“Hello, Zuzu.”

She flashed him one of those venomously sweet grins she was so fond of— _(Azula, what big teeth you have. The better to eat you with, my dear.)_

“What do you want?”

She clicked her tongue at him. “I see your customer service hasn’t improved much.”

Reminding himself that he was at work, and that he was trying to build up his patience, Zuko forced himself to take a deep breath. It didn’t help.

“Are you here to order, or did you just come to make fun of me?”

“Why can’t I do both?” Turning her head briefly, she beckoned for her friends, reaching out a hand to tug Ty Lee closer. “What would you like? I’ll buy anything you want.”

That was Azula: dating for her was a competition, a way of showing off. Then again, given Zuko’s mediocre track record (a three-month relationship with Mai during their freshman year, before they both realized around the same time that they were gay), he couldn’t really critique her approach.

(And, in the back of Zuko’s mind, Katara’s words still echoed: _everything you did was always some kind of contest._ )

Ty Lee took her time deciding, and Azula was too absorbed in weaponizing her courtesy to bother hassling Zuko. Mai hung back, trying to look anywhere but up at the counter. Shaking his head to himself, Zuko fired off a quick text and caught her eye, holding up the phone and pointing at it meaningfully. The look she cast him in response was more than a little hostile, but she glanced down to check her messages.

**Zuko (5:57):** _If you really can’t stand being around the two of them when they’re like this, you could always just tell Ty Lee how you feel._

Mai looked up to glare at him before she began her reply.

**Mai (5:57):** _As if I’m going to take relationship advice from you._

**Mai (5:58):** _I’ll be honest with Ty Lee when you’re ready to be honest with yourself._

**Zuko (5:58):** _What’s that supposed to mean?_

**Mai (5:59):** Forget it. I told you I don’t want to talk about relationships with you. Or anything else, for that matter.

Before Zuko could reply, he heard Azula give a pointed cough. “If you’re quite finished—

“Yeah, yeah. So what’re you ordering?”

Later, walking home with his uncle after they’d closed up, Zuko felt uneasy. Azula only showed up to bother him at the tea shop when she couldn’t find any other more interesting target. The benefit of being a stain on the family honor was that he usually wasn’t worth the effort of tormenting. If Azula was getting bored, that spelled trouble.

And then there was Mai. _I’ll be honest with Ty Lee when you’re ready to be honest with yourself._ Thinking back over her words, Zuko had the sinking feeling he knew what she was referring to, and he didn’t want to dwell on that either.

“You seem to have a lot on your mind tonight, my nephew.”

“It was a long day.”

Uncle Iroh glanced over at him, and his eyes were a little too shrewd. “Did I hear your sister and her friends come into the shop earlier?”

“Yeah.” Zuko kicked at the pavement. “It’s not a big deal.”

“If you say so.”

This was far too leading a statement for Zuko’s current mood, so instead he changed the subject. “So when are we gonna sell out and start offering milk tea? I swear _another_ new boba place just opened down the street from school a week ago.”

“可口茶点 _Kekou Chadian._.” His uncle’s expression clouded. “I give them half a year. All these trendy places are the same.”

Sometimes Zuko thought the Jasmine Dragon wasn’t trendy enough, but it wasn’t like their customer base had been dwindling, so he didn’t complain.

They’d already eaten dinner at the tea shop, so by the time the two of them arrived home, Zuko’s only remaining plans for the night were to get through the bare minimum of his homework and fall into bed, which he accomplished in record time. Sleep, however, proved to be a more elusive task. After tossing around for a while and growing increasingly more frustrated, he sat up and decided he needed a distraction. Normally, he’d try to lose himself in some particularly thorny equation, but he’d already finished his latest assignment for Professor Jeong.

His eyes landed on his desk, where he’d stacked that afternoon’s tutoring materials in a pile. He thought back to Katara’s earlier tirade, to all of Sokka’s snarky side comments, and felt a resolve settle over him. Aang and his friends were all expecting him to stumble, to revert to their vision of his former self. But maybe, Zuko thought, grabbing a pencil and a sheet of paper—just maybe, he could put in the work to prove them wrong. And maybe in the process, he’d finally make amends.

* * *

As the first week of the new semester passed, and then the second, Sokka began to get used to the rhythm of school life again. He was even beginning to get used to Zuko, or at least to the fact that him being Aang’s tutor meant they were starting to see a lot more of each other than they had in a long time.

“I never knew Zuko was so good at math,” Aang told him, recounting the events of their latest session one afternoon. “He told me he’s been taking classes at a community college since he was a sophomore.” Aang paused. “Actually, I think Azula has classes there too.”

“Big surprise,” said Sokka. Why did those two get away with being perfect at everything? _They should save some for the rest of us._

Katara sniffed. “Well, even if he’s good at math, that doesn’t make him a good tutor.”

“I know,” said Aang, expression falling a little. Then he brightened. “But look! He gave me this formula guide with little pictures of all the different polygons on it.”

Sokka squinted down at the page. “At least we can strike drawing from Zuko’s list of talents.”

Katara snorted. “Oh, you’re one to talk.”

“Hey! My art is great. Isn’t that right, Suki?”

She beamed at him, and changed the subject.

So far, there had been no repeats of the lunch incident. Zuko continued to sit alone at the other end of the cafeteria, or was nowhere to be found by the time the middle of the day rolled around. But Sokka found himself confronted by a new dilemma: what was he supposed to do when he ran into Zuko in the hallway? Now that he was helping Aang with math, it felt rude to just ignore him completely, but that left Sokka in the hazardous limbo of middle ground. Should he make eye contact, give him a nod, wave? How could he come off like a decent human being without seeming overly friendly?

Having found no good solution, Sokka usually resorted to pulling out his phone whenever Zuko approached, pretending to be too deeply absorbed to be aware of his surroundings. Toph thought this was hilarious, and whenever she heard him start scrabbling for his device would loudly call “Hi, Zuko” for the rest of the world to hear.

“First Aang and Katara,” Sokka told her, “and now you, too? Are all my friends traitors?”

“You’ll get over it,” said Toph.

Although Katara’s original plan had been for their squad to take turns supervising each of Aang and Zuko’s tutoring sessions, this idea had quickly fallen by the wayside as the school year started up in earnest and they each grew busy with their own afterschool obligations. The local soccer season wouldn’t start up until the spring, but Sokka had his hands full preparing for his next competition with the debate club, which he’d joined on a dare after Katara teased him about finding an outlet for his loud mouth. He’d hated it, and then he’d loved it, and now he was pretty sure the club was responsible for about 90% of his public speaking skills.

For her part, Katara preferred to exercise her talent for soliloquizing through the dubious arena of high school theater. She’d even talked Aang into joining her once, during the spring musical last year, but he’d gotten stage fright and hidden in the back row of the chorus, and anyway he was usually too busy juggling all of his other involvements to devote so much time to one club in particular. Since Aang wasn’t a viable option, Katara was constantly on the hunt for her latest thespian victim. This year, she was organizing the drama department’s opening meeting, and Sokka shuddered to think of all the freshmen that would fall within her clutches.

“Can I come?” he asked her, figuring it might at least be entertaining to watch, as he helped her heave a few boxes of past playbills and scripts into the auditorium. “I’ve never been to a theater club meeting before.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “As heartened as I am to hear that you’ve finally warmed up to the drama program, you can’t come. It’s your turn to drive Toph to wrestling practice.”

At that, Sokka groaned a little. He didn’t mind chauffeuring his friend around, except that ever since he and Katara both got a license she actually had started calling the siblings her chauffeurs, and far too gleefully for his liking. It didn’t help that her parents, hot-shot lawyers that they were, really did have a driver. But because they disapproved of Toph’s involvement in anything rough-and-tumble, wrestling drop-off duty fell to her friends. She made it up to them on competition days by totally kicking everyone’s ass while Sokka and the others hollered from the bleachers, but sadly that afternoon’s practice was of the ordinary variety.

With nothing better to do except the pile of homework waiting for him when he got back to his room, Sokka decided to stay and watch the practice. Because Toph had been born with visual impairment, most of the schools she’d attended so far were wary of letting her join official sports teams, more concerned about liability than the legality of their waffling. So in the seventh grade she’d shown up to the local youth wrestling league to promise her allegiance (and the watchful eyes of her lawyer parents), and since that time had managed to build up an impressive reputation. She had real talent, that much was clear every time she stepped onto the mat, but she was also a lot of fun to watch (especially, Sokka thought, when the target of her wrath was anyone other than him). Their high school was missing out.

By the time he’d dropped Toph back home again, he’d almost missed dinner, and by the time he’d finished eating and washing up he didn’t need to check the clock to know he was behind schedule on his homework. After a while his father went to bed, followed by Aang, and then finally Katara, but as midnight neared Sokka was still wrapped up in his latest calculus assignment. He was so focused on his work that it was only when he heard his phone ringing that he jolted back to the present moment. Immediately, he registered that it wasn’t one of the special ringtones he’d set for his friends, but who else could it be this late at night?

_1 new call from Mr. Jerkface._

Sokka stared down at his screen in surprise, and spent a few seconds debating whether to answer before finally picking up.

“Zuko? Are you doing a butt dial?”

“Sokka.”

That was weird—his voice sounded relieved. Before Sokka could wonder too much about that, however, Zuko continued.

“Listen, I need you to do me a favor. I’ll do anything you want in return, just as long as you can help.”

Sokka frowned. “What kind of favor? What’s this about?”

“My uncle had a fall. They wouldn’t let me ride with him in the ambulance, but I—

Something in Sokka’s gut wrenched at hearing his voice break.

“—I don’t actually have my license. Mai won’t pick up her phone, and I’m _not_ calling my father or Azula.” There was a pause, and then: “Please. I know I’m asking a lot, but I wasn’t sure who else to try.”

“It’s okay,” Sokka said, realizing that it was, and grabbed his keys, the adrenaline overpowering any shock he may have felt at Zuko’s choosing to call _him_ , of all people. “I’m on my way.”

He didn’t tell Katara he was going, less because he thought she wouldn’t understand than because he didn’t want her to worry. Their mutual suspicion of Zuko aside, Uncle Iroh was well-liked by pretty much everybody. Toph, a frequent patron of the tea shop he ran, had a special fondness for him, but even though Sokka had only met the man once or twice, he hated the thought of anything bad happening to him.

He plugged the address Zuko had texted him into his GPS and tried not to speed on the way over. Zuko was waiting for him on the front steps, and without a word he pulled open the door to the passenger seat and climbed in.

Other than a gruff “thank you” from Zuko (followed by Sokka’s awkward “don’t mention it”), neither of them spoke throughout the entirety of the ride to the hospital. When they arrived, Sokka parked in the ramp and then followed Zuko inside.

“I’m here for my uncle.”

Zuko confirmed a few identifying details with the receptionist while Sokka lingered a few feet away, studiously pretending not to overhear any personal information.

“It looks like he was just taken in to see the doctor. He’s awake and his condition is stable, but they’re running some tests to make sure there’s nothing serious to worry about.”

“Can I see him?”

“Not while the doctors are still with him. If you’d like you can take a seat in our waiting room and I’ll send someone out for you as soon as visitors are allowed.”

Zuko nodded and walked back over to Sokka. “Thanks for the ride.”

He made as if to turn away again, but Sokka held out an arm, blocking his path.

“Wait a moment, will you? I’m staying too.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Oh yeah? And just how were you planning on getting back home?”

Shaking his head, Sokka led the way through the door to the waiting room. Grudgingly, Zuko followed.

Sokka found a spot near the other end of the room, and after a moment Zuko took a seat one chair away from him. Sokka got out his phone, deciding he really ought to message his father to let him know where he was, and pulled up the family groupchat. _Had to drive a friend to the hospital. Nothing serious, but I might be back late._ He paused as he was typing out the word “friend,” but what else could he say? _Hey, turns out my former childhood rival can’t drive and for some reason called_ me _to say his beloved-by-all uncle is in the hospital, so now I’m waiting there with him._ It sounded ridiculous. No one else needed to know Zuko was involved until it was all over.

As he went to put his phone away, a call from an unknown number came up, and Sokka automatically declined it, assuming it was just another spam message. As he did so, a list of his most recent calls popped up. Too late, he realized that Zuko had glanced over at him at exactly the wrong moment. He raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Jerkface?”

Sokka felt his cheeks grow warm. “Um, it was either that or Crown Prince Zuko the Angsty?”

“What’s wrong with just ‘Zuko’?”

If Sokka hadn’t known better—if they weren’t sitting in a hospital waiting room, if the two of them had a less fraught history—he would’ve thought Zuko was teasing him. Even so, he had to defend himself.

“Come on,” Sokka said, “I’m the nickname man.”

Zuko took out his phone. “Really? In that case, should I use Nickname Man to replace Mr. Plan?”

“You don’t really have me in your phone as—

“I guess you’ll never know.” Zuko held the device out of reach, and almost managed to look smug.

At that moment, a young couple walked into the waiting room, and Zuko’s expression sobered, as if he’d been reminded why they were there. He looked away.

The silence stretched on, and it began to make Sokka feel uneasy. Katara might be planning on becoming a doctor, but Sokka wasn’t fond of hospitals. They were too much a reminder of one hospital in particular.

Perhaps because it was late, and perhaps because he longed for a distraction, he found himself turning to Zuko.

“So Aang says you and your sister are taking some community college classes.”

Zuko snorted. “Oh believe me, I don’t think even that’s good enough for Azula. I’m sure she’d leave high school behind entirely if she thought she could get away with it.”

“I guess you’ve both always been pretty advanced academically.”

“Not always.” A shadow passed over Zuko’s face, but otherwise his expression remained the same. “Growing up in my father’s house meant nothing less than perfection would be accepted. In elementary and middle school I used to struggle through homework I didn’t understand and only scrape by with an A- after staying up half the night for weeks on end, but of course that was never good enough, not when Azula was a grade below me and still got an A.”

Sokka nodded slowly, trying to take in his words.

“Well,” he said tentatively, “you’ve come far enough that the school’s willing to let you be Aang’s tutor.”

“That’s different. Math is comforting, in a way. You’re given a puzzle and told to find the solution. Solving things is the whole point.”

“I’ve always thought so.” Sokka stole a glance at him, but Zuko’s face remained unreadable. “Maybe the two of us have something in common after all.”

“Something in common.”

God, why was it always so hard to clock what he was thinking? Sokka almost preferred the volatile, melodramatic Zuko over this pensive version. But then Zuko looked over at him, gaze a little less guarded, and spoke in a quiet voice.

“To tell the truth, I still resent my father for everything he put me through, but in a way I’m lucky. Even after my mom left, I’ve always had my uncle by my side. If he hadn’t been there…” Zuko stopped. “Anyway, he’s always stood up for me, and he always forgives me no matter what. There’s nothing I can ever do to repay that kind of support, or to feel worthy of it.”

They were both quiet, Sokka replaying Zuko’s words in his mind, unable to think of anything to say in return. Just then, a nurse entered the room.

“Are you boys here for Iroh?”

Zuko leapt up. “Can we see him now?”

“You sure can. Right this way, please.”

Sokka trailed along a few paces behind both of them. Now that Zuko was going to see his uncle, he didn’t know if it would be appropriate for him to stay—it felt like an invasion of Zuko’s privacy, as if he’d be treading on some longstanding boundary between them. Then again, it was doubtful the doctors were going to let Iroh drive himself home, so Sokka decided to stick around in case a ride was needed.

He hovered just outside the door as Iroh’s physician talked Zuko through the test results.

“Your uncle is a very lucky man. The EMTs said he was briefly unconscious when they arrived, but it looks like he only suffered a minor concussion, and he has no broken bones.”

Zuko spent another couple minutes being repeatedly assured that his uncle had sustained no serious injuries before the doctor left them alone together. Then he turned to Iroh.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine, Zuko. I promise.”

His nephew gave him a long, hard stare. Something must have passed between them in that moment, because then Zuko did something Sokka had never before seen him do—he smiled.

“You scared me half to death. What’s your problem, falling like that? You’re never clumsy.”

“I was…distracted,” said Iroh. “Missed the bottom few steps.”

Sokka turned away from the doorframe, deciding that it’d be best if he went back out to the waiting room. Zuko would come find him if the pair of them needed a ride home.

“Young man, wait.”

Already a few steps down the hall, Sokka froze guiltily and spun around to face the speaker.

“Who, me?”

“Come here.”

Cautiously, Sokka did as he was bid. He was surprised when, as he stepped into the room, Iroh smiled warmly at him. Even Zuko didn’t look quite as tense as usual.

“You drove my nephew here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s no need to look so nervous, I only wanted to thank you. You’ve done Zuko and I a great favor.”

Sokka looked away, face burning. “It was no trouble. I’m glad I was still awake when Zuko called.”

“It was kind of you,” said Iroh. He paused a moment, looking Sokka over, and seemed to come to a decision. “You know, if you and your friends wanted to stop by the Jasmine Dragon next week, I could make you something special.” He winked. “On the house.”

“Oh, I really couldn’t—

“Please, I’d like you to come. What else does an old guy like me have to do except brew tea and fall down the stairs?”

“Not funny, Uncle.”

Iroh ignored his nephew and faced Sokka. “Will you accept the offer, as a favor to me?”

He hesitated, and then nodded. “In that case, I can at least drive you home.”

“That sounds like a fair arrangement.”

The ride back to Zuko’s house was almost as quiet as their journey over had been. Iroh had put on a good show while they were still inside the building, but as soon as he sat down in the back of the car, Sokka could tell how tired he must feel. Zuko, too, looked a little worn, watching over his uncle from the seat next to him.

When they arrived at the house, Zuko helped his uncle inside, and Sokka thought it would end there. But then Zuko turned back, paused a moment on the steps, and walked back over to Sokka, still sitting inside his parked car.

“I wanted to thank you again,” Zuko said, and his voice sounded surprisingly earnest. “If there’s anything I can do—

“No,” said Sokka, and was again surprised to find he meant it—a little over a year ago he would’ve given anything to have Zuko in his debt. “Really, it was the least I could do.”

An awkward silence descended over the pair of them. Just to have something to dispel the weirdness, Sokka said, “So you really can’t drive, huh.”

“What? It’s not that unusual.”

“Did you just never learn?”

Zuko shrugged. “Never had the time. Or the right teacher.”

“You’ve gotta know someone with a license who can help. Couldn’t your uncle teach you, or one of your friends?”

“I don’t _have_ friends, I _had_ friends.” Zuko turned away. In a quieter voice, he said, “At least I thought I did.”

Once again, Sokka found himself at a loss for words. This time, Zuko was the one to break the silence. His tone was calmer now.

“It’s getting late. We should probably both try to get some sleep before school tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” said Sokka, who among all the night’s twists and turns had completely forgotten about having to get up and go to class the next morning. “I guess we should.”

Neither of them moved.

“So I’ll, uh…” Zuko paused, gritted his teeth, and continued. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”

Sokka found himself nodding. “See you tomorrow.”

After that, he watched as Zuko walked back inside. For a moment, Sokka couldn’t bring himself to start up the ignition, overwhelmed by all the night’s unusual circumstances catching up with him at once, and by something else too, a feeling he didn’t have a name for. But then the feeling passed, and, shaking his head at himself, he began his drive home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me frantically searching Pleco: uhhhh quick what’s a good fake name for a boba shop that doesn’t already exist on my campus 
> 
> Also Uncle Iroh’s safety & well-being > medical accuracy (he’s fine I promise)


	3. Chapter 3

When Sokka got home from the hospital, it was already well past one in the morning. He congratulated himself on sneaking through the front door with barely a sound, but the extra effort turned out to have been pointless—both Katara and his father were waiting for him in the hall, looking angry but mostly worried, and Sokka realized guiltily that while he’d been driving Zuko and Iroh back to their house he’d missed several calls. Katara must have woken up, seen the text, and gone to alert Hakoda. They wanted to know everything: what had happened, who was involved, whether any _teenage shenanigans_ were at play, and how Sokka factored into the whole thing. Rather than risk digging himself into an even deeper hole, Sokka gave them both the truth, minus the finer points of his and Zuko’s waiting room conversation.

Katara, of course, was upset that Zuko had dragged him into it, but was also worried on Iroh’s behalf, and, when pressed, grudgingly admitted that Zuko had probably made the right call.

“Just as long as he doesn’t let it happen again.”

Sokka decided not to point out that neither of them had exactly _planned_ on taking a late-night trip to the hospital, and instead just nodded.

By the end of the following day at school, he’d managed to fill in the rest of his friends on the events of the previous night. They were all concerned for Iroh’s sake—perhaps Toph more than any of them—but Aang even ventured to suggest that the ordeal must have been hard on Zuko too.

“He could probably use some rest. Maybe we should skip our next tutoring session.” At the expressions on his friends’ faces, he held up his hands defensively. “I’m not saying that just because I don’t want to go, I really mean it.”

Sokka also told them about Iroh’s offer, which Katara shot down immediately.

“There’s no way we’re going.”

“Are you kidding?” said Toph. “Free tea and snacks? We have to go.”

“We’d only be taking advantage,” said Katara.

“You just don’t want to go because you’re afraid we’ll run into Zuko.”

At that Katara reddened, but didn’t contradict her. “Aang, how do you feel about all this?”

“I like tea,” he said, slowly, and then offered a tentative smile. “Especially the free kind.”

“In that case,” said Katara, sighing, “it looks like I’m outvoted.”

They made a plan to meet at the tea shop the following afternoon, once all their clubs and other activities were finished. Suki had a late volleyball practice that day and couldn’t come, so Sokka promised to save her as many snacks as he could stuff into his pockets.

“That’s great,” she said, giving him a grin and quick, bone-crushing hug, “but I’d rather you just put them in a bag or something.”

At home that night, Katara seemed subdued. Sokka hated to be on her bad side for a second day in a row, but he’d already promised to bring his friends to the tea shop, and, like Toph, saw no point in turning down free food even if it came from the uncle of their one-time sworn enemy.

Katara was quiet during dinner, and excused herself immediately afterwards to go over some homework questions with Aang, which left Sokka to do the washing up. It also left him plenty of time for self-reflection, which he’d been forced to do rather a lot of lately.

It wasn’t like Katara was being unreasonable. Sokka could call to mind a steady stream of incidents involving the Crown Prince of Angst himself from their childhood. Zuko, in fourth grade, grabbing Katara’s necklace after she dropped it accidentally and running away with it, refusing to give it back until the teacher made him. Zuko, in seventh grade, landing them both in detention after a schoolyard argument with Sokka turned into a shoving match. Zuko, a sophomore, as sullen and temperamental as ever, refusing to participate in their group project until he got sent to the principal’s office, even though in the end he managed to get off with barely a reprimand. When Azula felt like intimidating one of her classmates until she got what she wanted, Zuko had looked on. And whenever someone had tried to call him out on his irascible behavior, he’d brushed them aside.

So Sokka understood where his sister was coming from. But as those memories flooded over him, they were accompanied by other ones, moments that hadn’t seemed significant to him at the time, but which became all the more unsettling in hindsight. Zuko, in fifth grade, storming out of the classroom after the teacher announced they’d be making Mother’s Day cards, the construction paper he’d been given balled up in his fist. Zuko, in eighth grade, standing meekly next to his father during parent-teacher conferences, his usual aristocratic posturing crushed under the weight of Ozai’s shadow.

And then there was Zuko now: just as standoffish, but in some undefinable way more assured, and all the more inscrutable to Sokka. Where did all of that leave them?

He was pulled from his thoughts as Katara walked into the kitchen.

“Hey. Are you mad at me about the Jasmine Dragon thing?”

“I’m not mad.” She grabbed a dish towel and began drying the nearest plate, shoulders drooping a little in an uncharacteristic gesture of defeat. “This is all still really new to me. We’re only a few weeks into the school year, and everyone else seems to have moved on from the Zuko situation except for me.”

“Who says I’ve moved on?”

Katara gave him a dubious look, so he pressed on.

“I might not be as upset about Zuko as you are, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven him. I’m still working through this, too.”

“But something in you is already changing, I can tell. It’s even in the way you say his name. I just can’t figure out why.”

Sokka thought about that for a moment, turning her words over in his mind.

“Say what you want about Zuko, but when I watched him sitting by his uncle’s bedside, I saw someone completely different than the person I’d thought I was seeing all along.”

It wasn’t that their experience at the hospital had shown him some new side of Zuko he’d never noticed before, but he felt as though he’d caught a glimpse of the Zuko he knew from a totally different angle. And as much as he hated to admit it, it had thrown him off-balance.

Slowly, Katara said, “Maybe that’s true. I just don’t want you or any of the rest of us to get hurt by him again.”

“I know. I promise I won’t let that happen.”

And she didn’t look like she believed him, but she didn’t push the matter further.

The next afternoon, per their arrangement, the squad (minus Suki) staked out a table in the back corner of the Jasmine Dragon and debated how to go about obtaining their goodies. Toph was in favor up marching up to the counter and asking directly, while Katara thought that would be the height of rudeness, particularly since (in her opinion) Iroh shouldn’t be working at all with such a recent head injury, even on reduced hours, as the sign outside proclaimed. They were saved from having to make a decision when Zuko came through the swinging door to the kitchen, noticed them, and after a moment of hesitation walked over.

“Hey,” he said, looking right at Sokka. “You came.”

He scratched his neck and glanced down at the immaculately clean surface of the table, uncomfortably aware that the tips of his ears had grown warm. “Free food, right?”

“I’ll let my uncle know you’re here.”

It felt like no time at all before Iroh emerged from the kitchen to greet them warmly and thank Sokka once again for his courtesy (which only made him redden further). They were each invited to choose any drink from the menu they wanted, and then Iroh disappeared back behind the counter to get cooking.

As they waited on their order, Toph said, “Are we all going to homecoming again like last year? It’s next week, so we should probably decide soon.”

Aang groaned and put his head down on the table, mumbling something about the relentless advance of time. Even Katara looked a little surprised.

“You mean that’s next week already? I’d completely forgotten.”

“What about you, Mr. Plan?”

“I refuse to answer to that name.” At Toph’s mock-stern expression, Sokka relented. “Okay, I already asked Suki about it at the beginning of the semester. She says she’d rather go as a group anyway than do all the mushy couple stuff, so we’re both in agreement if everyone else is.”

“That’s fine with me,” Katara said, “as long as I can find time to go.”

“C’mon, Katara.” Aang did his best impression of puppy-dog eyes, which for a fifteen-year-old were pretty impressive.

“Oh, alright.” She smiled. “It might be fun. Remember last year when we had that Netflix marathon at Toph’s place afterwards?”

“Unfortunately my parents are in town this time around,” Toph said, “so the flatscreen is off-limits.”

“What about our place instead?”

After spending a few minutes working out the details, they agreed on a plan to head to the dance, skip out early if it got too lame, and head back to Sokka’s house for some late-night banter and Hakoda’s famous popcorn. By that point, Zuko had materialized next to their table, wielding their drink orders and a heavy tray of snacks. There was a good variety of mouthwatering dishes to choose from: tea cakes, bowls of spicy peanuts and fruit jellies, and—Aang’s favorite—egg custard tarts. He grinned.

“I hereby declare we made the right decision.”

“Before I forget.” Zuko reached into the pocket of his apron and drew out a small stack of notecards. “Aang, these are the review materials I made for this week. You should be able to use them for your quiz on Friday, so let me know if anything I’ve written down is confusing and we can go over it together.”

Aang gave a mock salute, and a wide grin. “Will do, Sifu Hotman.”

Sokka glanced between the pair of them, turning to Zuko. “You really are turning into a team player.”

“New year, new me,” he said, deadpan. Despite himself, Sokka laughed, and then tried to pretend it was a cough as Katara elbowed him in the ribs.

After that, Zuko retreated to the kitchen, but Sokka thought he looked a little more downcast than usual. It was in the subtle slope of his shoulders, a new inflection in his tone. Not that Sokka could blame him for that, but he found it still weighing on his mind by the time they left the tea shop. Without exactly consciously meaning to, he kept an eye on Zuko when he dropped by the next day’s tutoring session, and thought he did look distinctly dispirited, although it was always so hard to tell. The scare over his uncle must’ve shaken him more than he’d let on at the time.

Even Aang seemed to have noticed something was up.

“He barely even scolded me for not having time to finish looking over all the review materials he gave me, even though I could tell he worked hard on them. It’s like his heart wasn’t in it.”

After brooding about it all the next morning, Sokka came to two conclusions. The first was that until Zuko quit choking up the hallways with the metaphorical clouds of his gloomy mood, Sokka was going to continue letting it distract him, and that was frankly more than his fragile dignity could stomach. The second didn’t occur to him until the middle of eating lunch with his friends—again minus Suki, who had a volleyball team meeting—causing him to stand bolt upright halfway into some anecdote about Aang’s shop class.

“Everyone listen up. I’ve just had the wildest idea.”

“That’s never a good sign,” Toph muttered. Sokka rolled his eyes and continued.

“Just hear me out, okay? We know Zuko’s been down the past couple days because of his uncle, and forgive me for thinking he doesn’t have much of a healthy emotional support system in place.”

Katara’s eyes narrowed. “What does that have to do with us?”

“And what does that have to do with the figurine of Appa I’m carving?” Aang mumbled, but he gave Sokka his attention.

“Well—nothing, really. But I’ve been thinking a lot about how to repay Mr. Iroh for those free snacks. If his uncle feels better, Zuko will feel better, and if Zuko’s happy his uncle will be happier too.”

Katara’s expression hadn’t changed, but Aang was nodding along slowly.

“—so what I’m saying is, well, I think we should try to cheer Zuko up and invite him to homecoming with us.”

His friends were silent, and Sokka could feel his heart thudding up against his ribcage.

“If no one else is gonna jump in,” said Toph, “then I will. I don’t think it’s a bad idea.”

Katara glared at her. “How can you say that?”

“Let’s face it, Sokka’s right. Zuko’s been Aang’s tutor for a few weeks now, and according to Aang he’s not even doing such a bad job, even though he just went through a pretty rough night, and now his uncle is giving us free tea. And we’ve responded with what? Open hostility? Avoidance? I know you guys don’t trust him because of what happened in the past, and I wasn’t around for a lot of that, so I’ll never completely understand your grudge against him. But the way I see it, the guy said he wanted to change, and now he’s doing just that. This could be our shot at a fresh start.”

“And what makes you think we owe him one of those?”

Toph shrugged. “I’m not saying you do. But maybe you owe it to yourselves. You’re carrying around all these bitter feelings, which is valid, but that attitude isn’t doing you any more good than Zuko.”

“Wow, Toph,” Aang said. “Usually I’m the one saying stuff like that.”

“Your relentless piousness has rubbed off on me. Don’t let it go to your head.” She paused a moment. “To be honest, I’m trying to hold off judgement on Zuko until we know more about his home life. I mean, I’ve heard the rumors, and if they’re true it doesn’t excuse his behavior, but it does mean he has a lot of stones stacked against him. If he’s going to climb out of the cycle of destruction, he’ll need help.”

“And you think that help should come from us.” From her expression, Katara still wasn’t convinced.

“I don’t know if it _should_ , but it’s not like there’s anyone else lining up to take a chance on befriending him. It’s up to what you guys feel is right.”

Aang sighed. “That’s a tough question.”

“If we invite him to homecoming, we could treat it as a test run,” Sokka said. “Y’know, get to know him better, see if it’s worth turning over a new page. If it sucks, then we’ll just deal with Zuko for the rest of the semester and go back to normal afterwards.”

“I guess we might as well try,” Aang said.

Katara said nothing, but Sokka hadn’t expected her to warm up to the idea anyway. If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t entirely convinced either, but even days later he still hadn’t been able to get Zuko’s words that night at the hospital out of his head. He could no longer do nothing and pretend their situation was the same as it always had been.

When Sokka shared the plan with Suki later that day, she was hesitant at first, but after hearing his rationale agreed to go along with it. So far, Katara had remained firm in her opposition, which was their most major stumbling block. By the end of the week, however, two things happened which caused her to reconsider her feelings on the matter. First, the winter play was finally announced, and her involvement with the school’s theater program kicked into high gear. Between practicing for auditions and her regular classwork, concerns like Zuko and the homecoming dance became mere background noise.

The second (and probably more influential) factor was that their first grade reports had been sent out by the school. Aang, having only barely scraped by the previous year without needing to retake geometry, was now sitting at a B+ in algebra. None of their grades would be official until the end of the semester, of course, but as a mark of progress it was a start.

“It feels weird to say so,” Aang told his friends, “but Zuko kind of knows what he’s doing.”

So Katara had grumbled and sighed and dragged her heels, but ultimately she relented, and agreed to go along with the scheme as long as their relationship with Zuko was provisional only.

“One wrong move,” she said, “and I won’t agree to something like this again.”

It was the best bargain they were going to make with her, so Sokka accepted it. Now the only challenge that remained was actually asking Zuko if he wanted to go. This proved to be more complicated than Sokka had originally imagined. Actually, when he’d come up with his spur-of-the-moment plan, he hadn’t thought at all about how to approach Zuko with the idea, which in retrospect was a serious oversight.

Katara, of course, had little patience for his dithering.

“We’ve already decided to let him come with us, so just figure something out. And you’d better do it soon, or I’ll change my mind again.”

In the end, that was what finally pushed Sokka to act, since he really was grateful that Katara was willing to give the plan a try despite her misgivings. But he still hadn’t found a good opportunity to actually ask the question. Zuko had taken to disappearing shortly after his tutoring sessions were finished, and Sokka was reluctant to just call him out of the blue and ask. Finally, having exhausted all other options, he flagged Zuko down during lunch one day after catching sight of him in the cafeteria. Zuko looked for a moment like he was going to pretend not to see him, and then walked over to Sokka’s table.

“What is it?”

“Will you go to homecoming with me?”

From the expression on Zuko’s face, it was as though he’d grown an extra head.

“Will you go to homecoming with _us_ ,” Sokka amended. “Me, Suki, Aang, and Katara have a group set up, and we thought we’d invite you to join us.”

“You’re actually serious.”

For a moment, Sokka’s stomach dropped. “You don’t want to go?”

“Sokka, no offense, but I don’t want to be your pity invite.”

“You’re not _my_ pity invite,” said Sokka, “you’re _our_ pity invite.”

Zuko remained unimpressed, so he added, “You don’t have to think of it as pity. Think of it as…as an olive branch. Burying the hatchet, so to speak.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

Sokka looked around at his friends. Aang and Suki both shot him a thumbs-up, and Toph muttered, _duh_. After a moment of hesitation, Katara nodded slowly.

“It looks like we’re all in agreement.”

Zuko didn’t smile—the only time Sokka had ever seen him do that was at the hospital, talking with his uncle—but still something in his face softened, just a little.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “I guess I’ll go.”

Sokka felt more victorious than he probably should have, given the circumstances.

* * *

Sokka wasn’t the only one who’d been dwelling on the impromptu hospital visit. Try as he might, Zuko couldn’t shake the incident from his mind, and not just because despite what his uncle had said, he knew he’d have to keep a close eye on him to make sure everything really was fine. The morning after, while dragging himself out of bed for his weekly 8:00am math lecture at the local college and wishing he was the sort of person who could get away with skipping class, Zuko had gone over everything he’d said to Sokka. In the light of day, all that stuff about solving equations and his father’s expectations seemed maudlin and unprovoked.

 _Oh god_ , he’d thought, _is this what opening up feels like?_ He was not a fan.

Despite Zuko’s utter sense of mortification, however, Sokka’s behavior towards him hadn’t shifted since the night at the hospital. Or rather, it had, but not in the way Zuko was anticipating. Sokka and his friends had always held him at a distance, treating him with abundant caution. Their hesitation was probably warranted, but now Sokka seemed to have relaxed towards him, if only slightly—his attitude resembled neither the pity nor the disgust that Zuko was accustomed to.

And now there was this homecoming business. He’d made the mistake of confessing Sokka’s invitation to his uncle, who wouldn’t let up about the fact that he’d suddenly developed a social life. It was the same conversation every night at dinner.

“So tell me about this boy you’re going to homecoming with. Is he the one I met at the hospital?”

“For the thousandth time, Uncle, I’m not going with _him_ , I’m going with his friends.”

“Sure, sure. So tell me about him.”

At that, Zuko would usually let out a strangled yell and retreat to his room, while his uncle only laughed.

Now, the night had finally arrived, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach Zuko went through the motions of getting ready. It was as if he could feel the atoms in his hands all buzzing beneath his skin, and his head was strangely light, making it difficult for him to concentrate for any length of time on one particular task. He should’ve just texted Sokka earlier to say he wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t make it, but it was no use now, he’d probably be on his way over soon.

Zuko had been pacing around his bedroom worrying over his hair for fifteen minutes when he heard his uncle call from the front entryway.

“There’s someone here to see you.”

“Tell Sokka I’ll be there in just a moment.”

“Sokka will have to wait.”

At that voice, Zuko wheeled around in surprise to see Ty Lee standing in the doorway. She gave a sheepish wave, and motioned towards the room. “May I come in?”

Slowly, Zuko nodded, and she stepped inside, but kept her distance.

“Your taste in decoration has definitely changed since the last time I visited you at home.”

“I was eleven,” Zuko said, “and that was at my father’s house, not here.”

“Right.” Cautiously, she took another step forward. “Well, I’m sorry to bother you when you’re in the middle of something, but since I was in the neighborhood I wanted to stop by and ask you a question.”

“I thought my sister told you I was a traitor who wasn’t worth speaking to.”

Now Ty Lee definitely looked uncomfortable, but she continued. “It’s actually because of her that I came to see you. We’re coming up on our two-year anniversary, and I’m trying to plan a gift for her.”

“Two years.” Zuko shook his head. “I didn’t realize it had been so long already.”

“Sometimes it feels like longer,” Ty Lee confessed. “Anyway, I’m hoping to surprise her, so that means I can’t ask her what she wants.”

“So you thought you’d ask me.”

Clocking the skepticism in his tone, Ty Lee said, “You’re probably the only one who’s known her longer than I have. I know the two of you don’t get along so well anymore, but I’m completely out of ideas, so I wanted to hear your opinion.”

“Given that the heads of her enemies and your undying loyalty are both presumably off the table, I’m not sure I have much to offer you. Azula’s not really a material person.”

That, at least, was something Zuko could say in her favor—she might be the favorite child, but she wasn’t spoiled.

Ty Lee nodded thoughtfully. “You know, I hate to admit it, but since my parents have always acted like they can buy a person’s affection, gift-giving is usually my first instinct. They’re like, ‘oh, Ty Lee, sorry we called you by your older sister’s name for the third time this week, have a necklace.’ It didn’t even occur to me that for Azula, the real gift might be an experience we share together.”

Zuko couldn’t tell whether he was supposed to laugh or make some kind of sympathetic gesture, so his resulting reaction came out a strangled in-between sound that he promptly covered with a cough. Fortunately, Ty Lee didn’t seem to notice.

“Thanks Zuko. This was actually really helpful.”

He nodded, even though she was the one who’d done most of the talking. Ty Lee was probably one of those people who needed a sounding board more than concrete advice.

“Well, since you’re busy I guess I’ll get going.” She paused in the doorway, and turned back, giving him a smile that was tentative but fully genuine. “You look really nice, Zuko. I hope you have fun tonight.”

He glanced down at himself, and only then remembered he was halfway through dressing for homecoming. He looked back at Ty Lee.

“Are you and my sister going?”

“You and I both know Azula and parties do not mix well. We’re having girls’ night at Mai’s.”

Zuko nodded, for a moment wishing things could be like the old days—that he’d get dragged into whatever they were doing, spend the evening swapping sarcastic comments with Mai instead of facing up to the prospect of a school dance. But that would, of course, mean hanging out with his sister, which would inevitably lead to a storm of taunting on all sides followed by a nasty argument. Mai would be even more mopey than usual in the presence of the happy couple, and Ty Lee wouldn’t have a clue what was wrong and would try to smooth things over, in the process unintentionally making things worse. Maybe homecoming was the better alternative.

“Well, you have fun too.”

“I will.” There was a real smile this time—easier and more carefree. This was the Ty Lee Zuko had grown up with. “I’ll see you around.”

Out in the hall, Ty Lee murmured something to his uncle, who laughed, and then came the sound of the door being pulled shut. Zuko closed his eyes. There were a thousand thoughts running through his head, none of which he particularly felt like picking out and dissecting at the moment. In a way, he was almost grateful for the immanent distraction of Sokka’s arrival, which might give him a chance to clear his mind, or at least fill it with something else to feel conflicted about.

So Azula was now stopping by the tea shop, and Ty Lee had visited his home on the same night he was planning to go to the school dance with Aang and his friends. The semester had already saddled him with a year’s worth of surprises, but as he went back to fussing over his hair, Zuko had the sneaking suspicion that there were more in store for him in the months ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, the homecoming dance was supposed to be included in this chapter, but as I got writing the whole thing kept getting longer and more unwieldy, so I finally decided to split the chapter into two parts. That means the fic will now probably have nine chapters overall instead of eight, with a shorter bonus update in a couple days (feat. Sokka and Zuko being gay disasters and flawless queen Suki to the rescue, of course). I hope you enjoy, and thanks for sticking with me so far!


	4. Chapter 4

The night of the homecoming dance arrived to witness all the chaos to be expected of any scheme involving Sokka and his friends. 

Already, they were getting off to a rocky start. Between Sokka, his sister, and Aang, not a single person was dressed on time, and while Katara got away with looking flawless no matter how much she’d rushed through getting ready, and even Aang’s bowtie managed to look charming instead of hopelessly outdated, as Sokka straightened his only half-ironed button-down in the mirror, he knew the best he’d be able to settle for something a little better than “scruffy.” To top it all off, Suki, who only lived a few blocks away, had realized halfway through walking over to their place that she’d forgotten her phone and had to go back for it. She’d already cemented her reputation as one of the fastest runners in the school, but even so by the time they were all on their way Sokka knew they’d be late. 

“Good thing I decided not to wear heels.” Suki slid into the seat next to him, and he keyed the ignition. “So what’s the game plan?” 

“I called dibs on the car, so Katara and Aang are getting an Uber over to Toph’s place and then I guess her family’s driver is taking them. You and I are on Zuko duty.”

“Why us?”

“Because I already have his address.” 

“Fair enough.” 

This time, Zuko wasn’t already waiting for him out front, so Sokka was forced to go up and ring the bell, and then stand awkwardly on the stairs, not sure where to look or what to do. Behind the door, he heard a small scuffle. 

“…okay, Uncle, just let me—"

Zuko yanked open the door with an exasperated look on his face, which quickly melted as he caught sight of Sokka. The two of them stood there, sizing each other up. 

Being confronted with the sight of Zuko now made Sokka realize that he’d perhaps been just the tiniest bit curious (okay, more than the tiniest bit curious) to see what he would wear for the occasion. He’d always given the impression of someone who didn’t care about dressing up for school functions unless forced to, but could still clean up nicely when he wanted. Seeing him now, Sokka congratulated himself on having been right. It wasn’t the clothes themselves—Sokka had yet to be accused of knowing anything about fashion—but the way Zuko carried them off, the way he stood there with one hand on the doorframe and the other jammed into his pocket, so casually prepossessing and completely oblivious to the effect he was having. 

It would be a lie to say that Sokka had never found Zuko physically attractive before, but when someone is your enemy that tends to get marked down on the list of faults along with everything else. It wasn’t that he was better-looking than some of the other guys Sokka knew, exactly. Sure he was pretty wiry for someone so adamant about not participating in any school sports, and his features overall bore a harsh sort of refinement (not to mention cheekbones that could kill a man). But more than that, his beauty lay in his bearing—ever since they were young, he’d always carried himself with a defiant, almost regal grace, chin held high and shoulders squared. His more imperious mannerisms used to get on Sokka’s nerves, but if he was being honest with himself, he’d always been a little jealous too. For all his inner turmoil, Zuko knew how to wear his pride. And his eyes—there were days Sokka thought those eyes would burn a hole clean through him.

Right now, Zuko’s eyes were squinting at him in mild concern.

“Uh, Sokka? You alright?” 

Sokka blinked and then nodded, fervently hoping he hadn’t been staring too hard. “Are you, um, all set?”

He thought he heard a snort come from the vicinity of the car, but when he craned around to look Suki was wearing a perfectly innocent expression. 

“I am.” Zuko paused. “Thanks for coming to pick me up.”

“Between you, Toph, and Aang it’s turning into my full-time job.”

“You should start charging.”

A honk sounded. Suki stuck her head through the window of the passenger seat. “So are we going to homecoming or not?” 

“Coming, coming.” Sokka ran back down the sidewalk towards her, and then stopped when he realized Zuko wasn’t following. “What’re you waiting for, Angst Man?”

“Right.” 

From Zuko’s expression, it appeared that it was just now dawning on him that going to homecoming meant actually <em>going</em> to homecoming—getting a ride in Sokka’s car, spending the evening with him and his friends, and all the rest. Sokka would have found this hilarious, but he’d begun to have the same realization. There was a funny sinking feeling in his stomach, and his feet seemed to have stopped moving. 

Fortunately, Suki had enough sense to make up for their mutual lapse in basic cognitive function, and somehow managed to wrangle them both into the car before Sokka had even noticed. For some reason, she was now sprawled across the backseat, and Zuko was riding shotgun next to him. 

“Don’t worry about it,” she told Sokka, when she caught him glancing back at her. “I have to finish getting ready. You and Zuko chat for a bit.” 

The two boys glanced at each other uncertainly, and then quickly looked away again. From the backseat, Suki poked Sokka’s shoulder. 

“Do I need to take over driving, too? At this rate we’ll miss the whole dance.” 

“Good point.” 

Sokka started up the car, and for the first minute or so they rode in uncomfortable silence. 

“Thanks for—” Zuko stopped. “I said that already, didn’t I.” 

“Yeah.” 

From the rearview mirror, Sokka caught Suki rolling her eyes at them. Under different circumstances, he would’ve done something silly, retaliated by sticking his tongue out or by making some comment about how he’d like to see <em>her</em> do better in a conversation with someone she used to loathe, and they’d have bickered happily about nothing. But Zuko was, after all, sitting right next to him. Fine. If his girlfriend wanted to give him a challenge, Sokka would rise to the occasion. 

“So Zuko. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your dancing skills?”

“Nonexistent.” 

“Come on, I find that hard to believe.”

“What’s hard to believe? I’ve never danced before, so it’s not like I’d be good at it.”

Sokka’s mouth dropped open. “What do you mean you’ve never danced before? Everybody dances.”

“Not me,” said Zuko, and Sokka’s mind was made up. 

“By the end of the night, we’re going to change that.”

“Bring it on.”

By that point, they’d reached the parking lot, and Sokka spotted Katara, Aang, and Toph heading in the direction of the nearest entrance. The two groups made their rendezvous, and then hightailed it to the gym. They were ten minutes late, but really, did anyone ever show up for these things on time?

A reasonable crowd had amassed by the time they’d sorted out their tickets and been allowed in. Sokka saw a fair number of his classmates clustered together in friend groups of their own, swaying to the sound of the Top 40 hits blaring through the room. 

“So what’s the theme supposed to be this year?” said Toph. 

Sokka glanced around at the decorations, but based on their general lack of cohesion he wasn’t in a much better position to determine that than she was. 

“Uh, ‘Under the Sea’? Or is it ‘Firey volcano’?” 

Zuko rolled his eyes. “It’s the four elements.”

For the second time that night, Sokka gaped at him. “How could you possibly know that? I thought paying attention to that sort of thing was beneath you.” 

Zuko pointed at each of the four walls. “Use your eyes. Each side of the room has a different scheme going. There’s clear imagery for water, earth, fire, and air.” 

“I’ve tried using Sokka’s eyes before,” Toph said. “They’re not the most reliable.” 

“Hey!”

“I didn’t notice the theme either,” Aang said, looking around. “I think it’s kinda cool.” 

“It’s definitely better than last year’s ‘Tropical Paradise’ theme,” said Suki. “Really I think it was just an excuse to allow future frat boys to wear Hawaiian shirts on a formal occasion.” 

As a new wave of students came through the gym doors, the migrated away from the entrance and towards the wall that, if Zuko’s theory was correct, looked like it was supposed to represent water. Zuko glanced around the room, the tiniest of frowns blooming between his eyebrows. “So what do we do now?”

Katara cut him a sarcastic, amused look. “It’s a dance. What do you think we do?”

“I usually just stand by the side and see how many couples’ arguments I can eavesdrop on,” Toph said. She grinned maliciously. “Last year I scored two whole breakups.” 

Suki high-fived her, and Katara shook her head at the pair of them. Sokka chanced a grin at Zuko. 

“I know what I said earlier, but you don’t have to dance if you don’t want to. Plenty of people come to these things just to hang out.”

“Or to make out,” Toph said, and Sokka thought he caught Zuko blushing a little. 

“I’ve never, uh, actually been to a school dance before.” 

“Not even one of those horrible middle school dances with a chaperone lurking around every corner?” Sokka asked. 

He shrugged. “My father thought they were a waste of time, so I was never allowed to go. I thought they were stupid anyway, so it didn’t really bother me.” 

“But—” Suki leaned in. “I mean, you had to have been curious, right?”

“Not really.” He turned away from her. 

Sokka was about to challenge him on that, but then he caught sight of a makeshift photobooth—really just a homemade backdrop and a hapless yearbook club freshman wielding a polaroid camera—over in one corner of the gym. He threw one arm around Suki and the other around the person nearest him, who happened to be Zuko. 

“New plan. We’re doing pictures.” 

Katara started to retort, but Zuko, sliding out of Sokka’s reach, beat her to it.

“I’ll pass.”

Sokka pouted at him. “You’re no fun.” 

“I’ve changed my mind,” Katara said. “If Zuko doesn’t want to, then we have to do it.” 

And that was how they wound up descending on the booth and sorting through a box of photo props that Sokka was pretty sure had been stolen from the drama department. He picked up a fake mustache and turned to Zuko. 

“You’d better not ruin the pictures with that grumpy face you always make. I’ve got my eyes on you.”

“That mustache looks ridiculous,” Zuko said. 

“It’s about the spirit of the thing,” Sokka insisted. He held up a floppy hat for Zuko’s inspection. “Here, you can have this.”

“No way.”

“How come?” 

“Doesn’t match my scar.” There was a wry twist at the corner of Zuko’s mouth, faint but unmistakable. Sokka’s heart skittered a moment. 

“Alright, Vogue Magazine, then why don’t you pick something?”

He rummaged through the bin for a moment, before pulling out a plastic tiara. “Crown Prince Zuko the Angsty, right?”

“Never gonna let me live that one down, I see.”

Zuko shrugged. “It’s better than jerkface.” 

They posed for six pictures, one polaroid each, which gave Katara time to shed her initial reluctance as they all tried to come up with increasingly silly tableaus. Even Zuko, who at first stood stiffly off to the side, eventually got in on the action, and joined them in doing some kind of over-the-top “four elements” theme for the last photo. Based on the wiggly arm movements, Sokka thought his element was supposed to be fire, but it was hard to be sure. 

Afterwards, pictures in hand, they hit the dance floor. Aang and Toph got into a dance battle, and a heated debate emerged over which of them won. Sokka tried to goad Zuko into doing the same, but he wouldn’t budge, so he was forced to challenge Katara instead, which was totally unfair because she had all that musical theater experience behind her (though Sokka thought he should get more points for creativity). As he was doing a move that involved flapping his arms around and squawking like a chicken in time to the beat, he caught Zuko stifling a laugh, and grinned shamelessly at him. 

“See? Dancing isn’t so hard.” 

“You call that dancing?”

“Think you can do better?” 

“You’ll have to try harder than that if you want to find out,” Zuko said. 

Sokka had the sudden, wild impulse to grab his hand, make good on that statement, but when he remembered that it was Zuko standing across from him he stopped. What where they doing here, joking around like it was a totally normal thing for them to do? Spending one night at the dance together didn’t change the fact that they weren’t friends, and might never be. 

Suki poked his shoulder. “Hey, you can’t give up dancing now, or Katara’s going to beat you.”

“I’ve already won,” she said, crossing her arms primly. 

“Personally, I’m ready to take a break from dancing for now,” Toph said. She turned to Zuko. “You wanna come eavesdrop with me? It’s better than TV, I promise.”

He shrugged. “Works for me.”

As he went off with Toph to learn her nefarious ways, Suki turned to Sokka. “We’ve been here all this time and the two of us haven’t even danced yet.” 

He grinned at her. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”

As if on cue, the music shifted to a slow song, and Sokka wrapped his arms around her. “Better?”

“For now.” 

As they swayed along with the song, Suki said, “You know, I wasn’t sure at first about inviting Zuko to come with us, but I think you’re right. It might be good for him.”

Sokka glanced back to the wall, where Toph was whispering something at Zuko. He looked like he was fighting a smile.

“Katara’s not too happy about it. Do you think I’m betraying our friends, forgiving him too easily?” 

Suki paused. “Ever since the whole tutoring thing started, you keep talking about what effect your changing relationship to Zuko might have on everyone else. You should think about what it is that you want, and go from there.” 

Sokka nodded slowly. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that.” 

Though answering the question of what he wanted on his own behalf rather than that of his friends was a difficult thing, and not really something he felt like doing the messy work of sorting through when he was having such a nice night. 

The song changed, but neither of them moved away. It was nice, just being with Suki, no words needing to pass between them. After so many years by each other’s side, they’d come to share an understanding, not unlike the way Sokka shared a unique understanding with his sister, or even with Aang. What would it be like when he went off to college next year, not having any of them within a moment’s reach? Suki already had a sports scholarship to her dream school, but Sokka was still working on his applications, calculating what program would be best for him, which horrendously expensive tuition rate was <em>too</em> horrendously expensive. He didn’t know where he’d end up. 

Glancing around, Sokka caught Zuko’s eyes on him from across the gym. For a moment, something in his gaze looked so distant and forlorn that it startled Sokka, but then Zuko looked away, and the expression passed. Sokka turned back to Suki.

“Your thoughts on this year’s homecoming as compared to those previous?”

“Depends if the Warriors beat the Dragons tomorrow night,” she said. 

“Well, if they pull that off, then this year is definitely one for the recordbooks.”

Suki gave an exaggerated sigh. “It’s a shame homecoming is so centered around football. I wish they’d pick one of the school teams that’s actually good to focus on.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re volleyball captain this year.”

They went back and forth like that for a while, until the song came to an end. Looking around, Sokka noticed that Zuko was no longer standing next to Toph by the wall. In fact, he didn’t seem to be anywhere inside the gym—not lurking in a corner or halfheartedly jumping in time to the music over by the DJ booth, and definitely not chatting with Aang and Katara. Maybe he’d just ducked out to use the restroom, but then again, Zuko was a known introvert. 

He turned back to Suki. “You haven’t seen Zuko anywhere, have you?” 

“Isn’t he with Toph?”

“He must’ve moved somewhere else.” 

“Hmm.” Suki frowned. “I’m sure he’s fine, but maybe it’s not a bad idea for you to check in on him.”

Sokka bit his lip, looking around again. “You sure?”

“Of course. You go find him. I’ll catch up with you later.” 

Suki gave his shoulder a squeeze and broke away from him, heading back over to Aang and Katara. Sokka wasn’t exactly sure where Zuko could’ve disappeared to, but there weren’t a lot of options—the halls nearest the gym were all patrolled pretty heavily to discourage not-so-secret makeout sessions. Catching the glow of the “exit” sign across the room, Sokka headed in that direction. Hanging around underneath the bleachers might be a cliché, but it was a nice night, and it probably wasn’t a bad place to be alone, as long as you didn’t run into some sophomore couple with the same idea. Sokka was in luck, because after he slipped through the gym’s back door he noticed Zuko standing by himself not far away, face pensive. Sokka walked up to him. 

“I thought I might find you out here.” 

It took a moment for Zuko to answer. “I told Toph I went to get some water. I didn’t think anyone else would notice I was gone.” 

“I guess the dance is kind of lame. I’m sorry you’re not having a good time.”

Zuko’s gaze flickered back to him, faint surprise registering on his face.

“That’s not—it isn’t—I’m fine,” he said at last, and then, “I think that might be the first time you’ve ever apologized to me.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Sokka said, “or my sister will never let me hear the end of it.”

He’d been joking, but Zuko’s expression didn’t shift, so Sokka decided to switch gears. 

“How come you’re hiding out here all by yourself?” He winced. “Sorry, loaded question, I know.”

To Sokka’s surprise, Zuko raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you said I shouldn’t get used to you apologizing.” 

“That’s the last time for tonight, I promise,” Sokka said, and couldn’t help the grin that escaped him. He thought he caught the corner of Zuko’s mouth quirk upwards in response, but the next moment his face was somber again. 

“I don’t think this is really my scene,” he said. 

Sokka nodded. “It’s not for everyone.” He paused. “You know, we were all planning on cutting out early and heading over to my place to hang for the night. You can come too, if you want.”

But Zuko shook his head. “I have an early shift at the Jasmine Dragon tomorrow. You stay and enjoy the dance, though. I can walk home from here.” 

“Where’s the fun in that? I don’t mind driving you.” 

Zuko looked at him, then, really looked <em>at</em> him, and not over his left shoulder or down at the patchy grass. His expression was difficult to interpret. “Why are you doing this?” 

Having the full force of Zuko’s gaze on him made Sokka feel disconcertingly like a deer in headlights. “Well, since I was supposed to be your ride, it’s probably a good idea for me to know where you’re at.” 

“No, I mean—” He waved his hand vaguely. “All of this. Inviting me to homecoming with your friends. Driving me around. Talking to me.” 

“Oh.” Somehow, Sokka thought, when Zuko asked the question, the whole idea made a lot less sense than when he’d been explaining it to his friends earlier. “I don’t really know. You’re kind of a mystery to me. Not to make you sound like a YA novel protagonist or anything, but for a while I thought I had you figured out, and now I’m realizing I maybe didn’t. Toph says we owe it to ourselves not to let the past overwhelm our lives in the present, and maybe she’s right. I think I’m ready to give you a second chance.” 

“And you really think I deserve one?” 

Zuko still hadn’t torn his eyes away, so Sokka tried his best to hold his gaze steady, heartbeat pounding in his chest. 

“I guess we’ll see.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do normal high schools have homecoming themes, or is that prom? My high school didn’t have either of those, so this is basically as much of a fantasy world to me as the original Avatar setting 
> 
> Ao3 was glitching on my computer, so I had to delete the chapter & reupload it. If you're experiencing some issues with it or got a second update email, that may be why!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a long chapter this time, but it’s all for the sake of advancing the plot! (At least I hope.) I wanted to let you know that towards the end of this chapter, there’s a brief scene in which Zuko & Sokka discuss Zuko’s past in a bit more depth than previous updates. Obviously, canon Ozai is pretty awful and some of that is reflected in this fic, which is alluded to during the scene. It’s all fairly mild and implicit (I tagged “light angst” and I will stay light angst!), but if reading about it might make you at all uncomfortable you can stop after the line “There was a somewhat strained silence” and start again at “He paused, his gaze still holding steadfast to Sokka’s own.” (Ooooh eye contact.) The focus of the scene is mainly on Sokka & Zuko in the present learning to understand one another, but I respect your decision to choose what content is right for you!
> 
> Also thank you to everyone who reassured me after the last chapter that high schools do in fact have homecoming themes—I’m relieved to know that at least this one time Hollywood hasn’t lied to me.

Zuko was sitting by himself at his usual lunch table, doing his usual Monday best to get through the day without incident, when he spotted Sokka heading towards him from across the cafeteria. Zuko blinked, looked down at his food, and cautiously raised his head again. Sokka was still there. He tried glancing away one more time, just for good measure, but the evidence of his eyes appeared perfectly sound.

Sokka plopped his tray down across from him. “What’s up?”

Zuko stared at him, and Sokka’s smile began to droop around the edges. “What is it? Do I have something stuck in my teeth?”

“No,” said Zuko finally, unfreezing again with conscious effort. “It’s nothing, sorry. Hey.”

The grin was back. “Hey yourself.”

Something in Zuko’s chest swelled and then sank again. “So you’re sitting here today.”

“Is that a problem?” Sokka asked, half-joking but also half-concerned.

“I guess I don’t mind.”

From the entryway, Aang had caught sight of the two of them. He wavered a moment, and then bounded over to Sokka, sliding to a seat next to him.

“Sifu Hotman.” He nodded at Zuko, then at Sokka. “Mr. Plan.”

Sokka groaned. “It was one time. _One time_ Toph called me that, and now it’s a whole stupid trend.”

There was a smile tugging at the corner of Zuko’s lips that he couldn’t quite bring himself to hide. Sokka noticed, and something passed over his face—like clouds parting, a shifting of the light, though of course he was only sitting under the same fluorescents as always. Zuko looked away and swallowed hard.

He felt someone sit down beside him, and glanced over to see Suki, who was leaning across the table to steal one of Sokka’s fries. Catching Zuko’s gaze, she winked at him and put a finger to her lips. Then she stuffed the fry in her mouth and said, “So where’d you sneak off to after homecoming the other night? You missed the party.”

“I left early so I could get up for work,” said Zuko. “How was the rest of the dance?”

“It was okay.” Suki shrugged. “We ended up ducking out early too so we could go back to Sokka’s for snacks and movies. You should’ve been there.”

Her tone was so casual Zuko found it a little astonishing. He’d never spent much time with Suki, but prior to the start of this year she’d always seemed to regard him with a watered-down version of the same suspicion as her friends. The sudden about-face was unnerving.

“I’m not sure that would’ve been a good idea,” he mumbled, but Suki was already turning back around to whisper some comment to Sokka. He looked across the room, frowning slightly. Zuko followed the line of his gaze and frowned too.

Katara was standing near one of the cafeteria doors, looking none too pleased to see him. Toph, who must’ve come in with her, had already dropped to a seat on the other side of Aang, but by the looks of things, her companion wasn’t too keen to follow. Zuko stood up.

“I actually, um, I have to go prepare for one of my college classes now, so I’ll see you later.”

Sokka leaned across the table and yanked him to a seat again. “Oh no you don’t. You’re not sneaking off on us this time. Katara can deal with it.”

As if she’d overheard, Katara levied the requisite glare at her brother, and made her way over to their table with evident reluctance. She took a seat as far away from Zuko as she could manage, and started up a conversation with Suki, pointedly looking the opposite direction from him.

Sokka sighed. “She’ll come around eventually.”

He was still leaning towards him across the table, Zuko noticed, not that he felt like dwelling on that.

There were certain things Zuko made a rule of not thinking too hard about, and most of the homecoming dance should reasonably have fallen under that category: Sokka with his hair down, Sokka casually slinging an arm around him. He’d been in the same predicament all weekend. Images from that night crept unprompted into Zuko’s thoughts, and he found himself returning to them almost unawares until, realizing what he was doing, he had to shut them out again, and so the cycle repeated itself.

Right now, Sokka wasn’t exactly making it easy for him to stick to his rule, so Zuko did his best to steel himself against the not-exactly-unwanted thoughts and pay for it later.

“You okay?” Sokka squinted at him. “You seem a little spacey today.”

“Just tired,” Zuko said. “I had to help my uncle open the shop this morning.”

“Yikes.” Sokka winced, and launched into a monologue about how much he hated getting up early on Monday mornings. Watching him, Zuko allowed his thoughts to wander again.

Actually, since the morning shift was usually the busiest, Uncle Iroh always hired part-time help while Zuko got to sleep a few extra minutes. Grateful as he was, lately his uncle had made up for the favor by taking far too much interest in the particulars of his social life. Ever since both Ty Lee and Sokka had shown up on his doorstep on the same night, Uncle Iroh seemed to have gotten the idea that Zuko’s hermit crab self was finally peeking its head out of the proverbial shell. Zuko had tried pointing out that Ty Lee was really Azula’s friend, not his, and that going to homecoming with Sokka hadn’t been his idea, but it was no use.

“I’m just happy you’re branching out,” his uncle would say. “I know you study hard, but make sure to have some fun this year, too.”

Zuko glanced back across the table. Now Sokka, he was fun. At least, he always seemed to be joking around with his friends whenever Zuko caught sight of him, making them laugh and groan in turns at his bad puns. He probably went to parties, too, or if he didn’t then he still had hangout plans on a Friday night, a date with his girlfriend instead of with his homework for calc 3. As for himself, Zuko wasn’t sure if “fun” was even a word in his vocabulary.

“So anyway,” Sokka was saying, “that’s why I can’t be trusted with hot liquids before ten in the morning.”

He stopped, and for the second time that day his smile faltered. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Better than you can imagine,” Zuko said, and knew Sokka wouldn’t understand that he actually meant it. Even if it broke his rule, having someone like Sokka to eat lunch with beat sitting in his sister’s shadow, and it definitely beat spending every lunch period by himself.

That afternoon, Zuko drifted through his classes, and managed to distract himself from the dangerous lure of hope by focusing on what he needed to prepare for his next exam with Professor Jeong Jeong. Usually, on the days he didn’t have to tutor Aang, Zuko spent an hour or so going over a few practice problems in one of the quieter study halls, before he finished out the night at the Jasmine Dragon. Today, as he was getting ready to do just that, Ty Lee poked her head into the classroom.

“Zuko? Do you mind if we talk to you for a minute?”

Mai stepped into view behind her. Unlike the ever-bubbly Ty Lee, she didn’t look too thrilled to be there (though she never did seem thrilled to be anywhere, and that was what Zuko used to like about her).

“Uhh, sure,” he said, and Ty Lee tiptoed inside, followed by Mai.

“Thanks.” Ty Lee smiled hesitantly at him, and then turned a warmer grin on her friend. “And thank you for agreeing to come with me.”

“Sure thing, Princess Peach.”

Ty-Lee clapped a hand to her heart in indignation, but Zuko thought she was blushing a little. “How dare you, I’m obviously more of a Daisy.”

“Does that make Azula the Luigi in this situation?” Zuko asked, and Mai shot him a look that, for her, could have passed as amused.

“I hate to break it to you, Zuko, but if anyone’s Luigi it has to be you.”

“Fair enough,” he muttered. “So will one of you actually tell me why it is you came to see me?”

“Well…”

The two girls exchanged a glance. With the same uncharacteristic timidity as when she’d visited Zuko the night of homecoming, Ty Lee said, “I’ve decided to plan an anniversary surprise party for Azula, and I need you and Mai to help me.”

“Honestly,” said Mai, “I don’t know why you’re going to all the trouble. I don’t think surprises are Azula’s thing.”

Ty Lee shrugged. “Azula always chooses me. That’s not something I get much of anywhere else, so I want to do this for her, to show her how much that means.”

Zuko stole a glance at Mai, but her face remained impassive. He was almost jealous—that ability could come in handy.

“And why involve me in all this?”

“To tell the truth,” said Ty Lee, “I think she misses you.”

“Azula?” Zuko snorted. “Do you know how many times she used to tell me she wished she was an only child when we were growing up?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Mai, “we were there.”

“I’m not saying she’s aware of it,” Ty Lee continued, “I just think she’s…well, a little different this year. She doesn’t seem down, but her behavior has been even more erratic than usual.” A pause, during which Ty Lee looked a little dejected. “She won’t tell me anything about it, though. You know how she is. She always has to be Miss Perfect.”

That, at least, Zuko could understand. But even so…

“I can help you plan the party,” he said, “but I’m not going. It won’t do Azula or I any good for her to add homicide to her list of hobbies.”

Now Mai definitely looked amused, but Ty Lee frowned.

“If that’s what you think is best,” she said, slowly, “but—

She stopped. “Well, I guess I have no right to ask you to consider attending, after all the two of you have been through together. But she—”

Again, Ty Lee paused. She took a deep breath, and then continued. “If you ever tell Azula I said this, I’ll kill you in cold blood before she has the chance to murder me, but I think she could learn a few things from you.” She met Zuko’s eyes solemnly. “You know. Things I’m not sure anyone else in your family is prepared to teach her.”

After a beat, Zuko nodded, and Ty Lee gave him a small, grateful smile. She turned back to Mai.

“Okay, we can go now.”

“Wait.”

Zuko shot Mai a significant look, and she rolled her eyes at him, but brushed a light finger against Ty Lee’s shoulder. “Actually, I have to ask Zuko something first. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

After Ty Lee was gone, Mai said, “This better not be about my little crush. I should never have told you in the first place.”

“Maybe not.” Zuko paused. “I told you about Sokka.”

“Yeah, but I could’ve guessed that.”

“ _How_?” He hadn’t been that obvious, had he? “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. The point is, this whole anniversary party is going to complicate things, especially if I’m involved. Between you, me, Azula, and Ty Lee there’s already enough gunpowder built up that if anyone lights a fuse we’ll explode.”

Mai nodded. “I agree that the party could be a disaster, but what do you want me to do about it? Ty Lee has her heart set on the idea. Honestly, I’m not sure her worries about Azula are unfounded, and while I don’t think this is the solution I don’t exactly have a better one.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to go through with it.”

“If you were in my place, wouldn’t you?” Mai didn’t wait for him to answer. “I’ll keep things under control. Ty Lee and Azula are so caught up in each other that I don’t think either of them suspects any feelings on my end, and as long as we keep your role in the proceedings a secret there’s no reason for things to go south.”

Zuko frowned. “You think so?”

Mai shrugged. “Well, I can hope.”

“Just—be careful.”

Mai looked him over, an odd expression on her face, and nodded again. “Okay. You too.”

And then, never one for polite goodbyes, she turned to go, and Zuko was again left alone with his math homework and his buzzing thoughts.

* * *

The week passed, and Sokka made a point of sitting with Zuko at lunch whenever he got to the cafeteria before his friends. He still felt a little self-conscious, but it was worth it for the rare moments Zuko let his guard down and began to relax a little, which never failed to make Sokka marvel at how incongruous these brief glimpses of him were with the version of Zuko that was rapidly dissipating in Sokka’s mind. He figured neither of them were just going to work through their past organically, so now that they’d decided to try out the whole “getting to know each other” thing, he should at least make an effort to be intentional about it.

Although none of them had shown quite the same initiative as Sokka when making efforts to include Zuko in some of their routine activities, Aang, Toph, and Suki had all begun to warm up to him, and to hear Aang’s report on the subject, tutoring sessions were at least a little less tedious now that Zuko was willing to crack a smile at one of his jokes every now and then. Only Katara remained steadfast in her refusal to pay Zuko any attention whatsoever. Though her fury had certainly cooled over the course of the past several weeks, she still seemed determined to simply ignore him whenever they happened to be around one another. This did not leave Sokka feeling particularly inspired about their group’s overall commitment to turning over a new leaf, but he wasn’t yet willing to let things go back to normal.

And then, on the following Tuesday during lunch, Katara arrived at their ordinary table with a dangerous gleam in her eyes, which Sokka knew could mean only one thing: his sister was crafting a new scheme.

Zuko apparently had one of his community college classes that afternoon, and both Toph and Suki were absent, which meant Aang and Sokka got to be on the receiving end of Katara’s latest enterprise. She didn’t bother to ease them into it.

“I want Zuko to be Hamlet in the winter play this year.”

Sokka choked on his sip of water, and Aang clapped him on the back.

“ _What_?” He spluttered. He seized Katara by the shoulders. “Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

She shrugged him off. “Think about it, Sokka.” She clapped her hands together, clearly enraptured with the brilliance of the idea. “I know he’s got an inner theater kid trapped inside just waiting to be set free.”

“He does have a flair for the dramatic,” Aang said.

Sokka cast Katara a suspicious frown. “But you don’t even like Zuko.”

“I’m willing to put that aside for the greater good,” she said, like she hadn’t spent the first month of the semester complaining about the fact that he was tutoring Aang. “I’ll be much more inclined to forgive him if he turns out to have a solid baritone.”

“Is there even any singing in _Hamlet_?”

His sister’s expression grew serious. “Look, I know it’s a long shot, but the drama club really has to reach for members this year. The Shakespeare show is always less popular than the spring musical, so fall is the worst time for finding new recruits. Jet was our leading man, and ever since he moved schools after the arson incident we’ve been struggling to fill the vacuum. Frankly, Haru doesn’t have the stage presence or the ability to memorize so many lines, Teo already called dibs on Horatio, and the Duke looks like he’s literally twelve. We could cross-cast, but most of the girls want to go for Ophelia or Gertrude.” She gave a frustrated sigh. “I’m running out of options here, and you’ve gotta admit that the parental issues and nobler-than-thou attitude Zuko brings to the table could be a definite asset. If he can remember math equations, he can quote some Shakespeare.”

“That’s not bad logic,” Sokka admitted, “but has Zuko ever performed before? And you’re missing the most important thing, which is whether he even wants to be involved.”

“I’ll find that out when I ask him,” Katara said.

“Threaten, more like,” Sokka muttered, but she didn’t seem to hear him.

Unlike Sokka, Aang didn’t seem troubled by the plan.

“Maybe it’ll be good for Zuko to put himself out there, you know, get more engaged.” He paused. “Plus, if Katara can’t find a lead for her show then you or me is next in line, and I’m not about to try acting again after last time.”

“Hmm.”

Sokka wasn’t quite ready to throw himself under the bus for Zuko’s sake, but he also didn’t feel so hot about Zuko doing the same for him. Perhaps the best route was to split the difference and make sure Zuko knew ahead of time what he’d be in for.

“Alright,” Sokka said, “maybe Aang has a point.” He jabbed a finger at his sister. “But you’d better ask whether Zuko actually wants the part. _Ask_ , not intimidate.”

“I’ll do my best,” Katara said, though she didn’t sound convinced.

The next day, she was the one to approach Zuko during their lunch hour and take a seat at his table, albeit as far away from him as she could manage. She and Aang had both been let out early from class, so by the time Sokka arrived, the pair of them were already in the midst of an amicable argument.

“But Kat _aaaraaa_ ," Aang whined, "it's my turn to have the brain cell.”

Across the table, Zuko looked on uncomprehendingly.

“It's simple," Sokka explained, sliding to a seat next to him. “Between the three of us, we have two brain cells: I get one, and Katara and Aang have to share. That’s why only one of them is allowed to be angry at a time, and the other one has to be the voice of reason.”

“You never even had a braincell,” Katara shot back.

“You know what,” said Zuko, “I’m just not going to respond.”

Katara rounded on him, and he flinched on instinct. Sokka recognized the look on her face and knew she was about to spring the question.

“So Zuko. How familiar are you with _Hamlet_?”

He paused. “‘This above all else: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’” And then, to the stares that surrounded him: “My uncle is a fan of all the great poets: Shakespeare, Li Bai, Saigyo. You wouldn’t believe the type of stuff I had to memorize in Saturday school growing up.”

Katara cast her brother a wide, victorious grin. “You see? I told you this could work.”

Sokka turned to Zuko. “Before she says anything else, just know you have the right to refuse anything she asks you.”

His sister rolled her eyes and ignored him. “Next question: how would you feel about auditioning to be Hamlet in the drama club’s fall play?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Zuko just blinked at her, and Katara sighed.

“Okay, I know why you wouldn’t trust me on this. To be honest, no one at the official audition last week really had a handle on the part, and we need some fresh energy if we’re going to capture audience attention and get more people to audition in the spring.”

“And you think I’m a good choice because…?”

Katara shrugged. “You have Hamlet energy.”

He didn’t look convinced.

“And you owe me about ten years’ worth of favors by now,” she said.

That, at least, seemed like a response Zuko could accept.

“If you let me audition for the part,” he said slowly, “won’t the rest of the cast complain about it being unfair?”

“Let me worry about that. You just worry about practicing your lines.” And Katara handed him the pages for the audition script.

Later, hanging back after Aang’s tutoring session, Sokka caught Zuko alone for a few minutes.

“Listen, my sister can be scary when she’s on a mission, but you really don’t have to go along with her plan if you don’t want to.”

“I know that.” Zuko shot him a scowl, and then sighed. “This is the first time Katara has ever suggested she wants anything to do with me. If the fall play is so important that she’s willing to put up with me for a while, maybe it’s worth getting involved.”

Sokka raised his eyebrows. “You saw _Romeo and Juliet_ last year, right?”

“Okay, so high school Shakespeare is usually terrible, but even though it was mostly lackluster I actually thought Jet and Katara were pretty well cast.”

“How could you?” Sokka was horrified. “ _Jet_?”

“If you think about it, he’s kind of the original Crown Prince of Angst,” said Zuko, “and it doesn’t get much more angsty than drinking poison because you’re too dense to realize your girlfriend isn’t dead yet.”

“You might be right, but I still have to stop being friends with you just for saying that.”

There was an awkward pause as Sokka realized what he’d said. Dimly, he was aware that his face had heated up considerably, but fortunately Zuko had turned away. After a moment, he said, “So you think I shouldn’t go through with it?”

“I think you should do what you want,” said Sokka, glad that Zuko had decided to ignore the whole “friend” thing. “I mean, there’s way cooler clubs out there than theater, but I won’t knock it if joining up is what you think is best for you.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Zuko said, “but it can’t hurt to try.” There was another pause.  
“This is my chance to show Katara that I’m not who I used to be.”

Sokka shook his head. “I admire your intentions, but you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“It can’t be that bad, right?”

The next afternoon, waiting for his private audition, Zuko didn’t look so sure about that anymore. Sokka had tagged along in case he needed to act as an intermediary between Zuko and Katara, but he also couldn’t pretend he wasn’t curious to see how Zuko’s potentially-dubious acting skills would turn out. As they stood together outside the back door to the auditorium, Sokka turned to him.

“You’re really gonna do this.”

“Too late to back out now,” Zuko said.

Just then, the door opened, and Katara stuck her head through the gap. “Alright, Zuko. Director Pakku and I are ready for you.”

He straightened up from where he’d been slouched against the wall. “Here goes.”

“Good luck,” Sokka said. “Or—wait, is it actually bad luck to say that? Should I say break a leg, or do people not do that if it’s only an audition?”

Zuko rolled his eyes as he went through the doors, but Sokka could tell he was smiling a little too. Katara turned to him.

“Don’t even think about coming in to watch. I don’t want Zuko to get nervous in front of any extra audience members and botch his line reading.”

Sokka pouted at her. “Then how am I supposed to keep an eye on you?”

“I promised I’d go easy on him, didn’t I?” Katara’s expression softened, just slightly. “I unlocked the door to the tech booth in back if you want to sneak in there and take a peek. But you’d better be completely silent, okay?”

“You’re the best.” Sokka flung his arms around her and then tore away in search of his hiding spot. He was quickly distracted by a growl coming somewhere from the vicinity of his stomach (and by the welcome sight of the vending machine just down the hall), so by the time he’d squirreled himself away inside the tech box, Zuko was nodding at something Director Pakku had just said and climbing the steps up to the stage.

The two of them weren’t living in some kind of coming-of-age movie, so when Zuko opened his mouth to begin his audition, of course he didn’t magically become a new person. All the same, Sokka thought, so transfixed he forgot all about the bag of chips in his hand, Zuko’s natural poise transferred well to the stage. If he felt at all uncomfortable, he didn’t look it, and even though he stumbled over his lines a few times, he read them with ease and quiet self-assurance.

As Zuko stepped back down to listen to something Katara was saying, Sokka allowed his mind to drift. If Katara could stomach spending the rest of the semester attending rehearsals with Zuko—and if she could accept the fact that he’d have an even bigger part in the show than her own—maybe the two of them could learn to get along a little better offstage, too. He was jolted from his thoughts by a knock on the tech booth door.

“Sokka, I know you’re in there.”

“How?”

Zuko sounded amused. “No offense, but the auditorium is almost empty, and you’re literally the loudest chewer I’ve ever heard.”

Sokka wilted, but perked up a bit when Zuko opened the door and grinned at him. Katara stood behind him in the hallway, not smiling but also not frowning.

“So have you found your new Hamlet?” Sokka asked.

“I need to discuss a few things with Director Pakku first,” she said. “We’ll have the decision by tomorrow.” She paused, taking a step towards Zuko. As if she could barely force the words from her mouth, she said, “You weren’t too bad out there.”

 _High praise_ , Sokka thought, glancing over at his sister with some surprise.

“Thanks.” Zuko’s expression didn’t shift, but his tone was sincere.

After the audition, Katara returned to the auditorium to talk with Pakku in private, while Sokka and Zuko wound up at the Jasmine Dragon. At first Sokka had objected to Zuko’s tentative invitation, citing all the usual excuses (dinner, homework, crushing fear of awkward conversation), but in the end he hadn’t been able to refuse a hot cup of tea, or the plate of leftover wheel cakes Uncle Iroh brought out for them, before promptly vanishing back into the kitchen with a wink and a knowing glance at his nephew. It was just past closing time—the shop was still running on reduced hours—and Sokka and Zuko were alone, seated across from one another in a booth by the window. For a while, neither of them spoke, absorbed in their tea and their own thoughts.

Finally, Zuko said, “Be honest with me. How’d I do?”

“Your delivery could use some work,” Sokka said, “but that’s what rehearsals are for, right?”

At that, Zuko shot him a mock-injured look, so he quickly added, “But you were great! I mean, definitely better than Aang or I, and we were Katara’s second choices.”

Zuko’s brow wrinkled. “I thought only the director got to make decisions about casting?”

“Traditionally, yeah. But Katara’s poured her half her life into the theater program since she was a freshman, so she has pull.”

“I see.” Zuko’s frown grew pensive. “This all so strange to wrap my head around. If you’d told me a few years ago that I’d be sitting here talking to you right after auditioning for the lead in the school play, I wouldn’t have believed you for all the money in the world.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Sokka said, “I wouldn’t have believed me either.”

“Here we are.”

They were quiet a moment. Sokka took a bite of his wheel cake, and said, “You know, whenever I used to complain about you, Suki would always tease me about it. I mean, she totally got _why_ I was complaining—like remember that time you helped Azula sabotage her equipment before soccer tryouts?—but she used to accuse me of going overboard. Kinda like how Katara is now, I guess.”

“I really am sorry about all of that,” Zuko murmured. “I should never have taken my own struggles out on the rest of you.”

“I’m pretty sure Suki’s moved on by now, anyway” said Sokka. “I mean, she didn’t mind it when you came with us to the dance, right? Her ability to stay cool is pretty impressive.”

Zuko bit his lip. “When did you two start dating?”

“It was near the end of freshman year. I’d just been through a pretty rough breakup—you remember Yue, who used to be in our class? Anyway, her family packed up and moved to Alaska after first semester, and we knew we weren’t going to be able to make it work long-distance. I mean, I don’t even know if the town they ended up in has cell service. Suki was there for me through all of that, just like she’d been there for me after my mom died. I guess at some point along the way we’d begun to develop feelings for one another without realizing it. We’ve been together ever since.”

Zuko didn’t respond right away. At last, he said, “It sounds like you’re both very happy together.”

“Happier than ever.”

Though come to think of it, the last time the two of them had so much as kissed must have been months ago. And neither of them had been against going to homecoming with a group of friends instead of as a couple. Did that mean their relationship was having problems? Sokka thought they were getting along fine, but what if Suki felt differently?

Not wanting to continue down that line of reasoning, Sokka returned to their earlier topic. “Will it bother you? Being the lead in the play, I mean. You’ve never struck me as someone who enjoys being in the spotlight.”

“What I don’t enjoy is being under a microscope,” Zuko said. He paused. “Honestly, I’m not thrilled about drawing so much attention to myself, but the novelty of it is appealing to me—I’ve never joined an afterschool club on my own terms before.” He gave a harsh sort of smile. “If I hadn’t moved out last year, I’d look forward to seeing the expression my father makes when he finds out about it.”

There was a somewhat strained silence.

“Zuko.” Sokka stopped. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but we’ve all been wondering what really happened last year. You know, when you kinda disappeared for a while, before you moved in with your uncle.”

“I know.” Zuko shot him a look that was difficult to parse. “That’s a pretty personal question.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I didn’t say that.” Zuko took his time with his next words. “It’s a little hard to explain. To fully understand what happened, I think you also need to understand everything that came before last year, and that’s not something I was clear on until I’d left it behind me.”

Sokka nodded to the scar across his left eye. “Like that?”

Just briefly, Zuko’s expression darkened. “Among other things.”

Sokka could still remember it clearly: that day when they were thirteen, and Zuko showed up halfway through lunch after he’d been absent from school for nearly a week, the new mark seared across his skin unmistakable. There had been stares, of course, and whispers, but Zuko held his head high, not deigning to glance at anyone. At first, they’d all been too scared to approach him about it, but then one of their classmates darted up to him in the schoolyard during recess.

“So where’d you get the scar?”

Zuko fixed him with a level glare, his gaze and tone both unwavering. “My dad.”

At that, Azula had laughed, and everyone around had joined in—that was what everyone always did in those days. Azula had that kind of power over people. Now, remembering his own laugh among them, Sokka felt a hot wave of shame wash over him.

“I wish I’d seen those things for what they were while they were happening,” he said quietly, unable to meet Zuko’s eyes. “I should have believed you.”

But Zuko’s voice, when it came, was remarkably calm.

“I didn’t exactly recognize my situation for what it was until I got older,” he said, “so it’s not like I should expect you to have done that for me. Last year, you could say I had an awakening, and that resulted in the decision to give my father a piece of my mind and leave home. Since then, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, about who and where I was, about what could or should have been done, and when. I haven’t found any easy answers.”

He paused to sip his tea, and for a brief moment the expression on his face—melancholy, remote, but with a steady current of determination running underneath—made Sokka understand why Katara had pegged him for a natural Shakespearean actor.

“Take my sister, for example.” Zuko’s gaze seemed both to land on Sokka and to pass through him, as though he were looking into the past and the present all at once. “I’ve been resentful of Azula my whole life. Unlike me, she always fit in perfectly with my father and his regime. But you’ve seen how she behaves: she’s manipulative and demanding, she relies on fear to get what she wants. Where do you think she learned that? You’ve said it yourself before, we’re both good students. And Azula’s better than I ever will be.”

Slowly, Sokka nodded, letting Zuko’s words sink in. For lack of anything better, he said, “So she’s still living at home, then.”

“For now. With me out of the picture, I’m sure she’s already next in line to be CEO of the company, so my father will want to keep an eye on her.”

Sokka had heard before about Zuko’s father’s company. He didn’t really know what line of business that company was in, only that it had been in the family for several generations, and that it must be quite lucrative—neither Zuko nor his sister were the sort to flaunt their wealth, but it was in the little things, like the evident quality of the clothes they wore (until Zuko had moved in with his uncle, and his outfits had started looking noticeably more secondhand), or in their carefully-arranged boxed lunches (a lot more professional-looking than Sokka’s usual hasty sandwich or Tupperware full of leftovers), even in the type of school supplies they owned.

Privately, Sokka had always wondered how it had come to be that Zuko or even Toph were attending the same high school as him—a pretty good option as far as public schools went, but a far cry from those expensive prep schools he knew some families sent their kids to in order to get them into Harvard. In Toph’s case, at least, it was probably because she’d insisted on being allowed some semblance of a balanced and ordinary teenage life, and her parents had given their begrudging approval to the school’s decent track record for classroom accessibility (not to mention its refusal to allow her to engage in “dangerous athletic activities”). But from what Sokka had gathered, shipping his kids off to a fancy private school with uniforms and some guarantee about perfect SAT scores seemed like exactly the sort of thing Zuko’s father would do.

 _But then again_ , Sokka reasoned, as the idea struck him, _maybe Zuko was never worth all the trouble_. With that thought, something hard lodged itself in his chest. He caught Zuko looking at him, brow furrowed, his expression as impenetrable as ever.

“Zuko—

Sokka stopped, not quite sure himself what he wanted to say.

“We don’t have to talk more about it tonight, but if you ever do want to tell me about your parents, or anything else, I’ll listen.”

Zuko gave him a searching look, face still drawn together in a frown, before finally he nodded slowly. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. Despite how it may sound, my childhood was far from remarkable. Ordinary cruelty is an insidious thing. Pick any random kid from one of our classes and they’ll probably have stories of their own.”

He paused, his gaze still holding steadfast to Sokka’s own. For an odd moment, Sokka felt his heartbeat flutter up in his chest.

“You can talk to me, too, you know,” Zuko said. “If you want to.”

It was late by the time Sokka got home, still in a daze even long after he and Zuko had parted ways for the evening. He’d already missed dinner, though mercifully Aang had saved a plate for him. Sokka scarfed it down without paying any attention to what he was eating, his mind spinning.

Nothing Zuko had implied at the tea shop had shocked Sokka, and perhaps that was the most unsettling thing. Of course he’d known that Zuko’s family life was less than stellar, that his prior behavior and personality were indicators of the help and attention he should have been receiving. But Zuko had always been so guarded, so determined in his aloofness, and Sokka had used his preoccupation with his own grief to rationalize looking the other way.

What did a person owe someone who’d hurt them in the past, if that someone had also been hurting? Did forgiveness mean complacency, or did it mean breaking the cycle of suffering and moving forward together?

Katara could think what she wanted, but Sokka really hadn’t forgotten about all the years of biting remarks, of butting heads, of Zuko’s obstinance and perennially confrontational attitude. And just because Zuko had been on the receiving end of some of that in his own life didn’t mean he couldn’t be held accountable for his actions. Impact over intent, as the saying had it. And yet, at the same time, how much could Sokka really blame an eight or twelve or fourteen-year-old kid, all the more vulnerable for his attempts at lashing out, now that they were both older and wiser and had come to better understand one other’s situations? Now that Zuko really did seem sorry, while Sokka had stumbled across regrets of his own?

He felt as though something long buried deep inside his chest had unlocked, as though what he’d once kept curled fierce and tight within him was now unfurling itself, stretching out its wings.

Out of the pair of them, it was Katara’s ferocious form of affection that drew the most praise and consternation. Sokka admired her for that, even if it sometimes took him a while to get onboard with her crusades, and even if he was accused of being callous and unfeeling in response. Katara had the right personality for protectiveness—she was stern and a little self-righteous, quick to jump to her loved ones’ defense and just as quick to hold them accountable for their actions. She’d instigated the household swear jar, but she’d also been the one to suggest they encourage Toph’s passion for wrestling by making sure she could get to and from practice every week (even though she wasn’t very fond of the sport herself). She was there for Aang on the rare nights when he still couldn’t sleep because he missed home, and she always sat in the front row for Sokka’s debate competitions.

Sokka knew that it was because of all these reasons, and so many more he couldn’t put into words, that his sister struggled the most with accepting Zuko. But he also knew that, were they ever to become friends (and her idea to get Zuko involved with the school play pointed to some hope in that direction), Katara would fight harder for him than anyone else—except, perhaps, for Sokka himself.

The strange new feeling surged inside of him. His heart pounded in his ears.

Katara might have the reputation for being the protective one, but Sokka too had felt the same urge coursing through him, like when Azula and Suki used to get into vicious battles over MVP or junior varsity captain (before they’d been unofficially banned from ever playing on the same team together). He was certainly familiar enough with it to recognize the sensation now, as unthinkable as it might once have seemed to be feeling this way about Zuko.

And in that moment, Sokka had a strange bout of clarity: he could continue to wrestle with the past they shared, and what it meant for their present, but it wouldn’t change the line he’d stepped across, the gate he was now closing behind him. Regardless of what they did or didn’t owe one another, Sokka would look out for Zuko, to make up for all the years he hadn’t. Even if it meant going against Azula, and Zuko’s father, and maybe even Sokka’s own friends, he’d have Zuko’s back, because he had to. It was that simple.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry about the longer-than-anticipated hiatus! There’s been quite a lot going on in my life these past few weeks, and also, I think, in many parts of the world at large. I hope you all are keeping your chins up and not getting too discouraged. In the midst of everything, I wanted to take the time and effort to work through this chapter piece by piece, rather than rush through a lower-quality update. Hopefully I’ll be able to have the next chapter out a little sooner than this one, and thank you for sticking with me!

Per Katara’s wishes, Zuko was cast as Hamlet, a decision which was initially met with some general grumbling, but by the end of the first rehearsal there was enough new drama to occupy his castmates’ attention that he didn’t think it was going to be a big problem. If Katara had been cast as Ophelia there might have been more words on the subject—actors, Zuko knew, had a keen nose for favoritism—but she’d laughed out loud at the possibility of pretending to be in love with him, so the role went to one of the seniors who’d given a good audition. In the end, Katara was chosen to play Laertes, a smaller but perhaps more appropriate role, what with the dramatic irony. Zuko suspected she was going to enjoy getting to feud with him onstage as well as off.

As Director Pakku went over the latest cuts to the script before they got underway with their third week of rehearsals, Zuko stole a glance at Katara. While she still hadn’t deigned to sit next to him at lunch, she’d stationed herself near him for every rehearsal so far (though despite the apparent altruism, her motive seemed to be as much to shield her castmates from Zuko as to guard him from them). Actually, despite her suspicion, Zuko wasn’t entirely opposed to someone keeping an eye on him. This was his first play, after all, and Katara wouldn’t hesitate to tell him if he was doing something wrong. He could admit, if only to himself, that if he was going to involve himself in the whole thing, he at least wanted to give a good performance.

Today, they were working their way through the rough blocking for the second act. He’d arranged it with Director Pakku that every week, there’d be at least one day when they’d only rehearse the scenes without Hamlet, so that Zuko could continue tutoring Aang. This afternoon he had no such luck, and instead was saddled with muddling his way through the “to be or not to be” speech instead of quietly working through a few math problems.

When they arrived at the scene in question, Zuko felt the eyes of the entire cast watching him. He should’ve thought this through more before he’d agreed to go along with Katara’s scheme. Hamlet had some of the most iconic lines in the history of Western literature, and now here he was, an amateur, casting his own feeble attempt into the rubbish bin of history.

“Zuko,” said Director Pakku, after he’d made his first attempt, “the next time you’re offstage, I want you to sit down and go through the monologue line-by-line. Try to figure out what Hamlet is really _saying_. What emotions might be causing him to feel this way? Why has the playwright chosen to phrase things in a particular manner?” He looked around at the rest of the cast. “This goes for the rest of you, too, when you’re feeling stuck on the language. We are not just actors, we are explorers—it is our job to interrogate the text and bring the results of our investigation to life onstage.”

Actually, when Zuko set about doing just that, he realized that taking a literary point of entry into the play made a lot more sense to him than trying to draw from some well of theatrical knowledge he mostly lacked. Having been Aang’s tutor, he could recognize the strategy at play behind Director Pakku’s instructions—it was like when Zuko had realized that Aang had trouble focusing on things that didn’t interest him, so he’d had to figure out how to reframe math in a more engaging way.

Zuko was so absorbed in his script that at first he didn’t notice the afternoon’s rehearsal had ended, and he looked up with surprise to see that the auditorium was already mostly empty. A few seats away, Katara was stuffing a stack of binders into her backpack. As she turned to leave, a playbill slipped out of one of the pockets and fluttered to the ground. On instinct, Zuko stooped to pick it up, and caught the title. _Love Amongst the Dragons._

He handed it to her. “I didn’t know you were a fan.”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” said Katara, “but yeah. Gran Gran took me to see it when I went to visit my family up north last year.”

Zuko nodded, and Katara shot him a strange look, as though she was curious despite herself.

“So where’d you hear about it? I wouldn’t say an oldie like _Love Amongst the Dragons_ is exactly popular among members of our generation.”

“It wa—it’s my mother’s favorite play.”

There was the old tense issue. _To be or to have been, that is the question._

Thankfully, Katara didn’t bring attention to it.

“I never knew.”

“Yeah, well…” A thought occurred to him. “If you want, I could show you my Dark Water Spirit mask sometime. It’s an authentic reproduction.”

“Hmm.” Katara appeared to be caught in a battle against her better nature. “Maybe if you bring it to rehearsal next week I’ll take a look.”

“Sure.”

Strangely, as she left Zuko felt the brief temptation to wave. That was odd. He’d never have considered himself a waving person before this year, but maybe Sokka was rubbing off on him.  
And, with the pang that usually accompanied the thought of that name, he finished packing up his things and headed out of the auditorium.

The year had reached that brief spell in mid-October when the leaves were changing color and the weather was still mild, fall on the precipice of tumbling slowly into winter. Before long it would be two months since the start of the semester—halfway through—though in some ways it felt like much longer.

Zuko slipped through the back door to the Jasmine Dragon. Ostensibly he was still scheduled for his usual pre-closing shift, but these days Uncle Iroh usually refused to let him do any actual work and instead had him sit at a table in the back to catch up on his homework. Zuko wasn’t complaining—between his regular classes and trips to the community college two mornings a week, not to mention tutoring Aang and now starting rehearsals as the lead in the school play, he was starting to wonder if, for perhaps the first time in his life, he’d overcommitted himself.

“I see you’re trying to make up for your lack of extracurriculars by doing them all in one semester,” his uncle had teased him, when Zuko told him about his new role. (But later, Zuko had caught him studiously writing down each of the performance dates on the calendar taped to their fridge.)

As he was loading up the dishwasher, he heard the bell on the front door ring. There was the sound of a muffled conversation, and then:

“Zuko? He’s in the kitchen. Come, you can follow me.”

“If it’s Azula again tell her not to bother,” Zuko called.

“No such luck.”

Sokka’s grinning face popped into view.

“Wow, your kitchen is so neat. I always make a mess back home.”

“A clean kitchen leads to a clear mind.” Uncle Iroh gestured to a stack of mugs. “Is there anything I can get you today?”

“Actually,” said Sokka, “I came by to see if Zuko might want to go for a drive with me.”

“He would love that,” Uncle Iroh said, without waiting for his nephew’s response.

 _Traitor_ , Zuko mouthed, but his uncle only beamed back at him.

“Great.” There was that easy grin again. “I have an hour to kill before I pick up Toph from wrestling, and I really don’t want to spend it on homework.”

They drove to the edge of town, where the city began to melt into the inner suburbs, mostly silent until Sokka pulled up next to a small, vacant park, and they stopped for a moment. Zuko wasn’t quite sure what to say, but then Sokka turned to him, looking a little sheepish.

“Sorry, I know you probably have other stuff you need to be doing. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment idea.” He paused. “You ever need to get away for a while?”

“Sometimes,” Zuko said. Sokka didn’t look like he was upset, just a little restless, maybe, which Zuko could understand. _Why me?_ he almost asked, but stopped himself. Sokka let out a breath, fog blooming on the windshield, glancing back out at the road. Outside, the street lamps flickered on. Zuko found himself particularly aware of the distance between the two of them—sitting next to each other, they weren’t close together, but they weren’t very far from one another either.

“So how do you handle it?” Sokka asked abruptly, looking over at him again. “I mean, you’ve got that full schedule of advanced classes, not to mention your job and the tutoring gig and now the fall play.”

Zuko thought for a moment. “I guess it is a lot of pressure, but it’s different than the type of pressure I was feeling before, which is liberating, in a way. There’s no one left for me to disappoint. I’m still trying not to let anyone down, but the only person’s expectations I have to live up to are my own.”

“That’s exactly my problem,” Sokka said. “Whatever high expectations other people might have for me, mine are even higher.”

Zuko looked down at his hand, considered putting it on Sokka’s shoulder, didn’t know what he’d do with it once it was there. _Thus conscience does make cowards of us all._

“When you’re a kid,” Sokka was saying, “you think all you need to do is grow up, and then you’ll be bigger and stronger and prepared for whatever comes your way. And then you get a little older, and you realize it’s a lot more complicated than that. Senior year is shaping up to be the most complicated one of them all.”

“If it’ll help clear up the confusion,” Zuko said, “I could go back to being your sworn enemy.”

Sokka laughed, tipping his head back, but then he looked at Zuko, and his eyes were earnest.

“I’ll admit, I never expected you to be one of those complications. I’m glad you are, though.”

When Zuko got home, dinner was already on the table. He ate with his uncle in companiable silence for a while, and then:

“A boy like that,” Uncle Iroh said, “you want to keep around.”

Zuko glowered at him “Don’t you think I know that?”

“Then what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.” At his uncle’s expression, Zuko sighed. “Look, there’s nothing I _can_ do. Sokka is only just now willing to try being friends with me. I don’t want to mess that up.”

“Whether you are friends or something else,” Uncle Iroh said, “I just want you to be happy, Zuko.”

At the height of his angsty teen years, Zuko probably would’ve said something like, _I’m never happy_ , but he only nodded, and tried not to think too hard about his uncle’s words when he ran into Sokka at school the next morning.

“Zuko! I’m glad I caught you. I wanted to ask—um, well…”

The hallway emptied as students scurried off to their homeroom classes. Sokka looked down at the floor. Zuko frowned.

“What is it?”

“Do you, uh, want to come over afterschool?” A pause. “Like, to my house?”

“But I’m supposed to tutor Aang afterschool,” Zuko said, and then cringed internally.

“I know,” Sokka said. “I meant after that.” He glanced up, and offered Zuko a tentative smile. “You’ve had me over to the Jasmine Dragon for free tea enough times by now that it’s rude if I don’t return the favor. We can just hang out if you want, or if you really insist we could try to get some studying done together.”

For a moment, Zuko hesitated, wrestling with himself in his mind, and then he thought _well, why not._

“I’d like that,” he said, trying his best to smile in return. He wasn’t sure he was entirely successful, but Sokka’s grin relaxed, and he leaned in to bump his shoulder against Zuko’s, before backing away again.

“Great! Then I’ll stop by to pick up you and Aang once you’re done.”

“Sounds good.”

They stood there, looking awkwardly at one another. Zuko cleared his throat. At last, Sokka said, “Well, I guess I should get going. See you later?”

Zuko swallowed and nodded. “Later.”

Sokka nodded back, and waved over his shoulder as he turned around to head to class. Zuko thought about possibly picking one of the nearby lockers to hide in and live out the rest of his life, but then he remembered he had a math exam coming up.

The final bell rang. He was late to homeroom, and the hallway was now almost empty. As if his mortification couldn’t get any worse, he heard a voice behind him.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you sneaking around.”

Zuko turned to see his sister standing at the opposite end of the hall.

“Sneaking around?”

He was thinking of Mai and Ty Lee, but Azula said, “Those new friends of yours sure are great. You’ve all somehow forgotten that you used to hate each other.”

“I never hated them,” Zuko said. “I was just confused.”

“And now they are. Come on, Zuzu, how long do you think this can really last?”

He glared at her. “Why do you care?”

“I just don’t want you to come crawling back to me for sympathy when your little rebellious phase inevitably blows up in your face,” she said.

“Don’t worry. That’s the last thing I’d do.” He paused. “Are you really spoiling your perfect attendance record just to come bother me?”

She waved her hall pass in front of his face, even though technically teachers weren’t supposed to let students out of the classroom within the first five minutes after the bell—but like everyone else, Zuko supposed, they probably made an exception for Azula.

“I have news for you,” she said. “Dad found out you’ve joined that little Shakespeare play. He’s not pleased.”

“I don’t care. It’s none of his business.”

“You used to.”

“I’ve changed.”

Azula heaved an exaggerated, put-upon sigh. “I just don’t understand you, Zuzu. You could’ve had it all, and you gave that up.”

“Maybe I realized I didn’t need it.”

“Or maybe you’re just making yet another mistake to add to your already impressive record.”

That was the thing about Azula—like a shark scenting blood across miles of ocean, she had a talent for picking past whatever surface barriers you’d put up to jab at the most vulnerable bits beneath. Zuko had known her all her life, but as used to her taunting as he was, she’d never once missed her mark.

All the same, as much as Zuko had once tried to deny it, the truth had begun to sprout inside of him months before, and seeing Azula standing across from him now, the fact of the matter was unavoidable. For so long he’d resisted any similarity between himself and his sister—even living in the same house, he’d felt as though they occupied two different worlds. But he was a mathematician, after all, he could connect a few dots, trace a line of descent: the competitiveness, the perfectionism, the instinct for self-reliance. Zuko wore the mark of his upbringing on his face, but Azula hadn’t gone unmarked either. And if he were a better person, he might’ve been able to bring himself to forgive her for it.

“So maybe I’m making a mistake,” he said. “Why does that matter to you?”

She frowned at him. “It doesn’t.”

“Then why are you still talking to me?”

He recognized the look of consternation that flitted across her face—another thing they’d both inherited, though from a different side of the family.

“Just to annoy you,” she said, and spun on her heels.

 _Hmm_ , Zuko thought, watching her go, _Maybe Ty Lee is right_. Dimly, he registered that he was now even later for homeroom than he had been before, and so he resolved (not entirely successfully) to put the whole thing out of his mind as he bolted back down the hallway.

* * *

The first problem with inviting Zuko over to his house afterschool, Sokka realized, was working out the convoluted trigonometry of seating arrangements on the ride home. If Zuko took shotgun, that would leave Aang alone in the backseat, which he’d definitely think was weird, and Aang wasn’t exactly a master of tact—and even besides that, Sokka didn’t want him to feel left out. But if Zuko sat in the back, that would also be weird, and it might reinforce his tendency to linger at the fringes of their group, which Sokka thought would only continue to make his sudden presence more awkward.

Yet for all of his dithering, when the moment finally arrived Aang slid naturally into the backseat, so Zuko shrugged and sat down next to Sokka.

“I think it’s cool that you’re coming over, Zuko. You can meet Appa and Momo!”

So that, of course, was the first order of business when they reached the house. Appa seemed to like Zuko—this filled Sokka with a strange sort of relief—and Momo flapped his wings at him, but otherwise stayed well-behaved. Afterwards, they scrounged through the kitchen cabinets for a snack, and then Aang announced he was taking Appa out for a walk.

“Do either of you want to come with?”

Sokka and Zuko exchanged a glance.

“You go,” Sokka said, feeling the odd impulse to keep Zuko to himself for a while. “Zuko and I have to talk about, uh…math.”

Aang, bless him, let the obvious excuse sail right over his head as he groaned. “Please, anything but more math, I’m done with that for the day.”

“You got it. Don’t let Appa eat any squirrels.”

Already halfway out the door, Aang shot Sokka an appalled look. “He would never!”

Once he was gone, Sokka turned to Zuko, and attempted a casual smile. “Looks like it’s just you and me.”

“I guess so.” Zuko shifted, and Sokka frowned suddenly.

“That’s okay with you, right?”

Zuko cut him an amused look. “I am but a fragile Victorian maiden who can never be alone with any man.”

Sokka grinned. “Okay okay, I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable. C’mon, I’ll show you my room.”

He realized, as they stepped inside, that it had been a month or so since he’d given the place a good cleaning, and with some embarrassment he turned to Zuko.

“Sorry, I know my stuff is everywhere, and it’s a little small.” He gestured to a patch of floor that was not already occupied by laundry or a stack of textbooks. “Um, have a seat, I guess?”

Zuko obliged. “What were you saying at the Jasmine Dragon yesterday about your house being messy?”

“I know, I know. It all gets out of hand so quickly. Like, one minute you’re labeling file folders the night before the first day of school, and the next you’re in the middle of a homework hurricane you just don’t have the energy to deal with.”

Sokka sat, and across from him Zuko tentatively followed suit.

“So…what do we do now?”

“Whatever you want.”

Zuko didn’t seem to know quite what to do with that information, so Sokka had a spur-of-the moment idea.

“Let’s talk math, like I told Aang. I have a very important question for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“What’s your favorite fractal?”

Zuko blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“How can you call yourself a mathematician if you don’t even have a favorite fractal?” Sokka shook his head at him in mock-disparagement. “Okay, then I’ll go first. Mine’s the Mandelbrot set.”

“Hmm. Pretty, but too mainstream.”

“Alright then, smart guy, what’s yours?”

He thought for a moment. “The Sierpinski carpet.”

“Oh I see, you’re one of _those_.”

“Maybe I just think triangles are overrated.”

“Are you being a math hipster right now? Is that even a thing?”

At that, Zuko actually gave a startled laugh, and Sokka felt his heart leap in his chest. _Oh spirits_ , he thought, _don’t ruin this or he’ll stop and get that sad look on his face again._

As if he’d read Sokka’s mind, Zuko’s expression did grow more serious, though this time he didn’t look at all sad. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Sokka said, and felt his heartrate pick up a little.

“What are your plans for after high school?”

“I’m not exactly sure yet. I mean, definitely college, but I haven’t narrowed down the list of places I’m applying yet.”

Zuko’s brow wrinkled. “You know some schools have their early action deadlines at the end of October, right?”

Sokka rolled his eyes at him. “Despite my reputation as Mr. Plan, I _do_ procrastinate just like everyone else.”

He weighed his options for a moment, and then grabbed his laptop from his backpack, beckoning Zuko over to him. After a moment of hesitation, Zuko inched closer, so that he was sitting next to Sokka.

“See this?” Sokka motioned to the spreadsheet, which by this point was pulled up on his computer basically 24/7. “I have a list going of every school I’m interested in combined with a bunch of important factors for considering my decision, like cost of attendance, scholarship endowment, program strength, average scores on Rate My Professor, and a some other stuff too. Right now I’m trying to set up an algorithm that’ll sort through the data based on a specific set of optimization criteria.”

Zuko nodded slowly. “Impressive. May I take a look?”

Sokka passed him the computer, and Zuko scrolled through the list, looking carefully through his notes. As he did so, Sokka felt a little self-conscious—he hadn’t really shown the spreadsheet to anyone yet, although he’d been working on it since the end of junior year. But Zuko, out of most of the people Sokka knew, was perhaps closest to him in terms of situation: they were both graduating seniors, both ambitious about their future plans, both passionate about some of the same subjects.

“Where are you thinking about going?” he asked.

Zuko hesitated a moment, and then said, “I’d always wanted to join the math program MIT, but financially speaking now that I’m living with my uncle that’s a little more complicated. I’m still applying, though. I’d like to show my father that I can get in and manage tuition without his help.” He looked away. “Not that I need to prove myself to him, or anything.”

“Well,” Sokka said, “you might not _need_ too, but sometimes achieving things out of spite is satisfying.”

Zuko nodded. “I noticed you don’t have MIT on your list.”

“I hadn’t really thought about it. Like you said, it’s expensive, and it’s kinda far away, and besides, I’m not a prodigy like you.”

“I hate that word. I’m not a prodigy, I just grew up in an environment where my grades were the only thing that mattered.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” For a moment, the ghost of a wistful smile stole across Zuko’s face. “You know, a lot of the kids I grew up with hated going to Saturday school. All of our parents forced us to go, for language training or cultural enrichment or extra tutoring. But I looked forward to it. Every week, my uncle would come to pick me up, and afterwards we’d spend the whole afternoon together at the Jasmine Dragon. I’d do my homework, and he’d pop out of the kitchen every once in a while to bring snacks or offer suggestions. Once I was a teenager I stopped hanging around the shop on weekends, but in all my stubbornness to make my own way in the world I think I missed it.”

Sokka could picture it in his head: the Zuko he’d known six or seven years ago crammed into a corner booth, frowning down at a stack of books with the same concentration he wore now.

Downstairs, there was the sound of the front door opening. “Anyone home?”

“Up here,” Sokka hollered, and a few moments later his father poked his head through the doorway.

“Oh. You’re Zuko, aren’t you?”

Zuko stood. “Um. Yes. It’s…it’s nice to meet you.”

Sokka leapt to his feet too.

“I completely forgot I never mentioned anything,” he said. “I invited Zuko over today so we could hang out and talk about college stuff.”

“I see. But weren’t you two—

Catching a look from his son, Hakoda switched gears mid-sentence. “Well, I’m glad you two boys have the chance to do some planning. I know applications season is a stressful time.” He turned back to Zuko. “I was just about to get started on dinner. Would you like to join us tonight?”

“Uh, actually, my uncle is waiting for me back home, so I should be going soon.”

Hakoda nodded. “You’re welcome to stay if you change your mind.”

As much as Sokka tried to persuade him, though, Zuko was firm about needing to be home for dinner, so Sokka relented, and offered to give him a ride back.

The night was cool, and the sky was already getting dark. In the passenger’s seat, Zuko pulled his coat a little tighter around his shoulders.

“You know,” said Sokka, “I could teach you to drive sometime, so you don’t have to keep letting me ferry you around everywhere.”

“I like letting you ferry me around,” said Zuko, quietly.

“Oh.”

It was difficult to tell in the gathering twilight, but beneath his mop of hair, Zuko’s ears looked a little red.

“Um. What I meant was, I think I have too much on my plate right now to be thinking about that. But—

He stopped, and glanced over at Sokka, giving him a small smile, which nonetheless radiated such genuine warmth it took him by surprise—it reminded him of that night at the hospital, almost two months ago now, when he’d first caught a glimpse of this softer, less guarded side of Zuko.

“I really do appreciate the offer,” Zuko was saying. “And thank you again for driving me, I wish I didn’t have to bother you about it.”

“I don’t mind,” Sokka said, and knew he didn’t. The thought came to him unbidden: _I’d keep driving with you, if you wanted, past your house and out of the city until morning, if it would make you smile again_. (And then, putting a mental coin in the mental swear jar, he thought, _damn, getting older is turning me into a sap_.)

Now he was the one blushing, he could tell. And Zuko was still looking right at him, which somehow seemed to make the whole situation worse.

“Driving you around lets me practice for my future career in ridesharing apps,” Sokka said, just to cover the tension.

“I guess you’ve gotta pay for grad school somehow,” Zuko said, and the atmosphere inside the car relaxed. Even so, Sokka’s head couldn’t shake a strange buzzing sensation, and he felt as though all the nerves beneath his skin were jangling against one another.

When he pulled up outside of Zuko’s house, he didn’t move to leave right away.

“I. Uh.” Zuko glanced over at Sokka, and then his gaze quickly flickered away again. “I had a nice time tonight. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me for hanging out with you. That’s just normal friend stuff.”

“Normal friend stuff.” Zuko paused. “I think that’s something I still feel a little out of step with.”

Sokka nodded slowly. “That makes sense. It’s a little weird for me too, but not in a bad way. It turns out keeping you around was a good idea.”

“Not everyone thinks so.”

“You mean Katara? She’ll come around eventually, once she gets to know you.”

“Not just her.” Zuko paused. “Look, forget I said anything. It doesn’t matter to me what other people think.”

He pulled open the door and started walking up to the house.

“So you’re not even going to say goodbye?” Sokka called after him.

Zuko wheeled around.

“Goodbye,” he said, deadpan, but the corner of his mouth quirked upward, and Sokka grinned at him.

“Goodbye yourself.”

At school the next week, Sokka noticed that instead of choosing the furthest spot possible from Zuko at lunch, Katara moved a few seats closer. The next time the gang went to one of Toph’s wrestling matches, Sokka badgered Zuko into tagging along, and she invited him to stop by the next practice so she could teach him a few moves, a definite sign of her approval (though Sokka suspected the offer was also a blatant excuse to engage in some good old-fashioned roughhousing).

The days grew shorter, and the semester crept by. Out on a walk with Suki in late October, Sokka said, “I’m thinking we should invite Zuko to join in on our Halloween plans this year.”

“Works for me,” Suki said. “It might be tricky to come up with a group costume for six, though.”

“Hmm. If we had seven we could each pick a deadly sin. Or we could find three more people and each go as one of the circles of hell.”

“Why is your first thought Dante’s nine circles of hell and not the nine planets?”

Sokka was aghast. “Suki, there’s only eight planets.”

“Hey, I can be a Pluto fan, alright?”

In the end, they weren’t able to come up with anything matching, but it didn’t matter because Katara took them to the drama club Halloween party, and the theater kids always out-dressed everyone else. Afterwards, they all stayed over at Sokka’s house—even Zuko—and once everyone had fallen asleep the two of them snuck down to the basement so Sokka could teach him how to lose at Super Smash Bros. He didn’t realize they’d both drifted off with the controllers still in their hands until Suki came downstairs the next morning to wake them up, with a sort of smirk on her face that Sokka had never noticed there before. When he tried to ask her about it, though, she brushed him off.

“You were drooling in your sleep,” she told him, before changing the subject, but Sokka knew for a fact that wasn’t true because he’d _never_ drooled in his sleep before (well, maybe only once or twice, but that was when he was much younger).

In fact, the more he thought about it, Suki had been behaving rather oddly for several weeks now. Not in a way that concerned him, exactly—she didn’t seem upset, and that was what mattered—but nonetheless Sokka found himself uneasy. He happened to catch Zuko’s eye from across the table as they were eating breakfast, and the feeling grew. Somehow, he had the vague sense that taking a chance on inviting Zuko into their friend group was creating consequences of the kind he hadn’t foreseen, which was troubling. Sokka was an overthinker—he always imagined every possible consequence for everything ( _So why do you still act so impulsive?_ he could hear Katara chiding him in the back of his brain).

If he knew one thing for certain, it was that he couldn’t yet put a name to whatever it was that was going on. That gave him a goal—keep an eye on Suki (and on Zuko too) over the next few weeks, and do some analysis. If his friends were going to insist on calling him Mr. Plan, well, he could fit that role—he could spreadsheet his weird emotional hunches if he wanted to.

His determination renewed, Sokka set about his stack of pancakes with enthusiasm. A new plan was definitely just the sort of thing this situation demanded.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! If you noticed the chapter count go up, it’s not because I’m making the story longer, but because I wanted to post a mini-update which was originally supposed to be the first part of the next chapter, which is my way of reassuring you that I’m still here and I’m still planning on finishing this fic, I’ve just got a lot on my plate these next few months, so my pace is currently pretty slow. I’m hoping to have a proper, full-length chapter up by the end of the month, and my current goal is to get the fic wrapped up by the end of 2020, but I can’t 100% guarantee that’ll actually happen. In the meantime, please enjoy this little interlude to the story from your queen and mine, and thank you for sticking with me!

Alright, so Suki had a scheme. 

_And what’s wrong with that?_ she thought to herself, jogging at the head of a column of her teammates, bleary-eyed and shivering in the November air, as she led the morning’s running club meeting. She and Sokka had crafted plenty of schemes together involving other people (usually, though not always, something to do with annoying Azula). This time it was Sokka’s turn to be on the receiving end.

It had all begun when Sokka informed her that Zuko was going to be Aang’s math tutor that semester. She’d known Sokka a long time, long enough to have grown accustomed to his frequent complaints against Zuko’s general standoffishness and irascible behavior. Privately, she’d always suspected these diatribes contained more than a touch of “the lady doth protest too much,” but of course for an A-student Sokka could be a real idiot sometimes. 

Moreover, she’d long imagined the existence of feelings on Zuko’s end, not because of the frankly hurtful saying that when a boy teases you it’s because he likes you, but because she’d sometimes caught him looking at Sokka when he thought no one else was paying attention, with such an infinite sorrow on his face that despite herself, Suki had been moved. She could understand what Zuko saw in him, after all, and as improbable as it might seem, she thought the pair of them might actually be able to balance one another out. Either that, or if they got together it’d create a cosmic hole in the universe, but didn’t everything feel that way when you were seventeen? 

Suki had been thinking it over for a while now. Probably there were a lot of people who wouldn’t take kindly to the notion of someone else showing interest in their boyfriend, but it wasn’t like she owned Sokka. He’d be an adult soon, and he could make his own choices—except when he couldn’t, and that was when Suki was there to step in for him. Sokka was one of her best friends. Whether their relationship went beyond that or not, the bottom line was that she wanted him to be happy. And lately, she wasn’t sure if either of them knew quite what that meant in terms of the whole dating thing. What she did know was that it wouldn’t do her or Sokka any good to waffle around and avoid the truth—whatever that “truth” happened to be. 

Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun with the situation first. 

As she jogged up to one of the school’s side entrances, she spotted Zuko across the street. She grinned. _Looks like the fun starts now._

“Zuko!” She waved, and he looked up and blinked in confusion. “Over here.”

He spotted her and waved tentatively back, so she waited for him to cross at the intersection and fell into step alongside him. 

“The whole school has been talking about the _Hamlet_ thing. How’s that going?” 

“It’s alright.” 

He didn’t elaborate, so Suki tried a different tactic. 

“You know, Sokka says your rehearsals are really coming along. He thinks you’re the perfect leading man.”

She cast Zuko a sideways glance, but if he picked up on the implication in her tone, he didn’t react. 

“If that’s true, then he’s sure changed his tune. He was the one trying to talk me out of the idea.”

“Yeah, I guess the theater kid gene skipped over him.”

Zuko cast her a brief, curious look. “So why are you so interested in it all of a sudden? I thought you weren’t much of a fan either.” 

“You can’t put me into that kind of box just because I’m a jock, I appreciate some good theatrics too. Whose idea do you think it was to update the mascot costume for the Kiyoshi Warriors?”

“Oh yeah? It looks pretty badass.” 

“Right? You should’ve been there for our junior year Halloween party, Sokka and I both did the makeup and everything.”

This time, Suki thought she saw something pass over Zuko’s face—gone in an instant, but unmistakable to the well-trained eye. _Caught you._

“It’s too bad we couldn’t figure out a group costume this year,” she said, deciding a slight change in topic might be best, “but it was probably worth it to see Toph dressed up as the Boulder and threatening to wrestle anyone who came within five feet of her.”

At that Zuko actually smiled, just a little. “She’s a force to be reckoned with.”

“And what about you? Katara tried explaining your costume to me, but I’m not sure I really got it. She said you were this Blue Spirit thing from some play you both like?”

Zuko shrugged. “Theater kid gene.” 

By now they’d passed through the entryway and were halfway down the hall where most of the senior lockers were located. Down at the other end, Suki spotted Sokka trying to do some alchemy with a large stack of textbooks and a very small amount of open locker space, and waved to grab his attention.

“Plan-Man, over here.”

He squinted at the pair of them suspiciously, but made his way through the sea of students now crowding the hallway to join them. 

“Let me get this straight, you and Zuko are hanging out together now?”

“You can’t get anything straight,” Suki scoffed. 

“Hey, right back at you, Bi-yoshi Warrior.” 

She wrinkled her nose. “Now that’s a bad pun even for you. Zuko and I were just chatting before class.”

Sokka turned to him. “You chat?” 

“I guess I do now,” Zuko said. Sokka threw up his hands. 

“It’s official,” he said, “the end of the world is upon us.” He turned to Katara, who’d noticed the small group and wandered over. “Did you hear Zuko is chatting now?”

She rolled her eyes and walked away again, but without, Suki noticed, levying her usual glare at Zuko. The first bell rang, signaling five minutes until the start of class. 

“I should go,” Zuko said. 

“I’ll walk with you,” Sokka said. 

He frowned. “But your homeroom’s on the other side of the building.”

Suki clapped him on the back. “Sometimes it’s best not to question Sokka’s pea-brained ideas and just go with it.”

Sokka stuck out his tongue at her, but slung an arm around Zuko’s shoulders to start cajoling him in the right direction. Watching them go, Suki grinned. Really, setting up your clueless boyfriend with his equally clueless one-time enemy was a lot more fun than the typical YA drama would suggest. She couldn’t imagine why people didn’t do it more often.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen Sokka and Suki are a bisexual power couple, don’t @ me. Also Suki & Uncle Iroh are the presidents of the Zukka fanclub, you heard it here first


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok technically where I am it's still the 26th so this chapter is still thematically relevant to the season 
> 
> Also shoutout to all of the Suki stans in the comments for the last chapter, I see you, I appreciate you, I support you

The arrival of the third week in November brought Zuko two surprises.

The first came after a particularly long _Hamlet_ rehearsal—with time running short before their final performance weekend, Director Pakku had kicked things into high gear. Sometimes, Aang would tag along backstage, and Zuko would spend a few minutes reviewing math with him whenever he got a spare moment. Probably not an arrangement the school would be too happy with, but when Zuko had mentioned this too him, Aang had given him a wide grin and said, “What the administration doesn’t know won’t hurt them.” (Somehow, Zuko always forgot that despite looking like the picture of innocence, Aang was really a troublemaker at heart.)

Zuko, packing up his bag, suddenly noticed Katara walking over to him out of the corner of his eye. As in, walking over to him voluntarily.

“Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” he said, and figured it must be something about that afternoon’s lackluster “to be or not to be” monologue, but instead she took a deep breath and said:

“I’m sorry. I know I’ve been pretty hard on you the past few months, and while I don’t exactly think I was in the wrong to be cautious, it might be time for me to try and move on.”

She paused, and if Zuko’s life had been on the line, he wouldn’t have been able to come up with a response. Katara continued.

“I realize now that you lashed out at us when we were younger because you were hurting. And I never let myself forgive you for it, because I was hurting too. Every time I let down my guard, you gave me a reason to put it back up again—at least, that’s what I thought. But either you’ve changed or I’ve changed or both, because I don’t think things can go on the same way as they were before. And really the whole reason I’m talking to you about this now is because—well, I wanted to invite you to join us for Thanksgiving.”

Zuko was able to pry his mouth open enough to croak, “You’re serious?”

“I’m always serious,” said Katara, in a very serious voice. “I know it’s kind of a bullshit holiday what with the historical revisionism and the ongoing theft of indigenous land, but it’s an excuse to eat a proper meal together, and we all want you to be there.”

“All?”

Katara’s face flushed, but she didn’t skirt the question.

“If you’re working on being better, then maybe I should too.” She bit her lip. “I think Sokka wants to respect your privacy, because he hasn’t said anything to me about it, but I know the two of you have been talking about—well, all the stuff that went on before this year. And I know my brother, too. I’ve seen the way he looks at you now, like there’s a part of you he needs to protect. After you showed me your _Love Amongst the Dragons_ mask, it got me thinking about how I’d been ignoring your attempts to show us that part of you because I was too busy trying to protect myself.” She paused. “I don’t know yet exactly what it is that Sokka sees in you, but I’m willing to try.”

“That’s—I’m—

Shocked? Flattered? Half convinced this is all a dream or some cruel trick of fate?

“Thank you,” said Zuko, as earnestly as he could muster. He wasn’t sure what else he could say, but Katara didn’t seem to need anything more eloquent than that.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it. I’m sure you must have other plans. You can let Sokka know tomorrow what you decide.”

As far as Zuko was aware, his plans involved the usual visit to Lu Ten at Jade Hill Memorial Park—not something he could abandon his uncle to attend to by himself.

But when Zuko broached the subject with Uncle Iroh later that night at dinner, kicking himself for even bringing it up in the first place, his uncle only smiled with the infinite warmth and generosity that still baffled him a little.

“I would love for you to go, Zuko.”

“But I can’t leave you alone for Thanksgiving.”

“Why not?” Uncle Iroh clasped his shoulder. “The best thing that you can do is live your own life, after all these years. That’s all I want for you.”

So in the end, Zuko was somehow talked into accepting the invitation, on the provision that the two of them would go to Memorial Park a little earlier than usual, and then afterwards Uncle Iroh would check in with some of his White Lotus friends so he could spend the evening drinking tea and playing pai sho without Zuko around to complain about it.

As Zuko was trying to wrap his head around this latest development in his very strange senior year, the second surprise of the week arrived, this time in the form of another friendly “chat” with Suki.

Her habit of jumping out at him from around corners or across the street hadn’t let up since she first tracked him down outside the school over a week ago, and now whenever Zuko walked down the hallway he had to look back over his shoulder twice—once for Azula, and once for Suki. On the same day he told Sokka that he’d be able to come over for Thanksgiving (and tried very hard not to notice the way Sokka’s eyes lit up at those words), Suki ambushed him from behind a fake palm tree near the main office afterschool.

Although she’d so far spent their conversations beating around the bush, on this particular occasion she got straight to the point. Smiling congenially, she said, “You trying to date my boyfriend, Zuko?”

He glowered at her. “No.”

“Why not? Isn’t he good enough for you?”

Zuko opened his mouth to retort, frowned slightly, and closed it again. Suki leaned in closer, and now her voice was serious. “I mean it, I think he’s into you. You should ask him out sometime.”

_This is a trap_ , Zuko’s brain told him. Based on everything he knew about Suki, he was pretty sure she could (and would) totally kick his ass if she needed to. Her smile was innocent enough, but he didn’t trust it for a minute.

Against his better judgement, he said, “What makes you think I’m into him?”

“For one thing, Broody Angst Man, subtlety is not your strength.”

Zuko bristled. “I can be subtle!”

“Sure you can,” Suki said, without bothering to sound entirely convinced, “just not about this. You know, keeping your feelings all bottled up inside and never saying anything about them won’t do you any good if what’s in your heart is written all over your face.” She glanced over at him. “Except for when you’re doing the whole scowling thing.”

“What,” he said, “would I be prettier if I smiled?”

Suki actually laughed at that. “You see, this is why Sokka likes you.”

Zuko looked down. “Why are you doing this? There’s plenty of easier pathways for revenge.”

“Can’t I care about Sokka’s happiness?”

“But…he’s your boyfriend.”

She shrugged. “We can share.” At the expression on Zuko’s face, she sighed. “Look, I wouldn’t be saying any of this to you if I didn’t mean it. Honest. I think the two of you might have a shot at something.”

“Yeah, but again, why? Up until the start of this year Sokka would never have bothered to cast me a second glance unless it was to glare at me.”

“And now he won’t stop talking about you.”

“It’ll pass.”

For a moment Suki looked troubled, and then she said, “I know it’s hard for you to believe me, but I really do want what’s best for Sokka, and even for you, too. I might not know what that is, but I think the two of you should at least talk about it.”

“And what will you do?”

“Probably the same thing I’ve always done. Girlfriend is just a label, after all.” She cut Zuko a wry grin. “I don’t mean I’m going to keep fucking him behind your back, I just mean that what Sokka and I have goes beyond romance. You don’t have to worry about being a homewrecker.”

“The last time I was accused of that,” said Zuko, “it was in a very different context.”

Again, she laughed. “It’s too bad you were a jerk all those years or we could’ve hung out more. I think I would’ve liked you.”

_Maybe I would’ve liked me too_ , Zuko thought.

“Listen, I’m about to be late for volleyball practice, but all I really wanted to do was let you know that you don’t have to think of me as an obstacle. I’m on your side here.”

“I’m still not quite sure I believe you,” he told her.

“That’s pretty much what I expected,” she said, “but still—you know, shoot your shot.”

That was close to the last thing Zuko was planning on doing, but even so, heading into Thanksgiving he couldn’t shake Suki’s words from his mind.

And as if he didn’t already have enough on his mind, he still had to worry about the anniversary party. Ty Lee kept putting it off, even though her actual anniversary with Azula had been more than a month ago. On the night before Thanksgiving, she called an emergency meeting with him and Mai to rework some of the details yet again.

“I need this to be perfect,” she told him. They were all sitting on the floor of Zuko’s bedroom—somehow, that had been determined to be the safest location for their schemes. The rationale was that Azula liked to show up out of the blue at Mai and Ty Lee’s houses, which was something she’d never bother to do for Zuko (though privately he suspected that the choice of location had just as much to do with their mutual reluctance to spend much time at home).

“Everything has to be up to Azula’s standards,” Ty Lee continued, “and you know how she is.”

Zuko didn’t say anything, but he felt a sliver of ice run through him. He tried to catch Mai’s eye, but she glanced pointedly away.

“You know,” he said to Ty Lee, hesitantly, “you’re really putting a lot of effort into this party. Maybe you should just try talking to Azula.”

“I already talk to Azula,” said Ty Lee. Her cheerful bravado didn’t falter, but Zuko thought he caught her smile slip for just a second.

“I mean about whatever’s bothering her.” _And you too._

“I told you, I _do_ talk to Azula. I just want to do something nice for her.”

Zuko believed it, but he also thought that maybe pouring your energy into planning an increasingly elaborate surprise party for your significant other was a little easier than having an vulnerable heart-to-heart about your relationship concerns.

For a long time that night, Zuko couldn’t bring himself to sleep, awash in a frenzy of conflicting emotions. He was less sure than ever now that the surprise party was a good idea, but every time he dwelled for a while on those worries, the prospect of tomorrow’s Thanksgiving dinner crept back into his head, and filled him with a whole new kind of feeling—just as anxious, but accompanied by a stirring in his chest that resembled the fledgling wings of hope. And that was not a feeling Zuko was all too comfortable with.

As hard as it was getting to tamp down on that sensation, he couldn’t bring himself to regret the past few months. It was as if the world he’d been waiting for ever since he left his father’s house had finally opened up under his feet, though whether it was a new pathway or only another chasm for him to tumble into, he couldn’t yet tell. Sokka and his friends all seemed so genuine, and yet doubt still lingered like an old friend in the back of his mind.

With all of these thoughts still churning inside of him, Zuko at last slid uneasily into sleep. But his dreams, unlike his thoughts, were surprisingly calm. In the murky space just after waking, their contents mostly slipped away from him, except for two things: hands linked together, and the flash of a familiar smile.

* * *

The spreadsheet was not working out as well as Sokka had intended.

Not the college spreadsheet—that had been a great idea, actually, and after talking with Zuko he’d even added MIT to the list and started drafting an application, and thanks to his algorithm he finally had a few more of those in the works too. No, it was the whole Suki-Zuko weirdness spreadsheet that was giving him trouble, because however many different inputs he threw in, it never brought him any closer to the heart of the matter, that being: what was Suki up to? What did it have to do with Zuko? And why did thinking about those two at the same time make his stomach churn unpleasantly?

Sokka tried to think back to when that had started happening, but he kept drawing a blank. Instead, his mind kept drifting between images of Zuko sitting alone across the cafeteria at the beginning of the semester, or bent over a math equation with a concentrated frown, or leaning against the doorframe when Sokka had come to pick him up the night of the homecoming dance, looking somehow both sheepish and haughty at once. Needless to say, this didn’t help at all—quite the opposite, in fact, which didn’t bode well.

On the morning of Thanksgiving, Sokka slept in and then joined his dad, Katara, and Aang for brunch and board games. He spent the better part of the afternoon trying (and failing) to skimp on his cleaning duties while waiting for the rest of their friends to arrive. Toph, never one to miss the opportunity for a free meal, had joined them the past couple years after her requisite time with her own family was finished. Suki’s family lived out of town, and they usually didn’t get together until December, so she’d also taken to tagging along for Thanksgiving dinners. This year, they’d be adding Zuko to the party.

That thought sent a curious jolt through Sokka’s stomach, even though he’d been the one to suggest the idea. Already he’d spent half the day fretting in the back of his head about what he should wear, which wasn’t something he ever did. He was lucky that as well as the two of them knew him, Katara and Aang couldn’t _actually_ read his mind, which might spare him some of the teasing.

Suki arrived later that afternoon, with several pumpkin pies in tow.

“I thought I’d come over early and help get everything set up,” she said. And then later, when she and Sokka were alone: “I have to talk to you about something.”

Sokka glanced through the window, where Toph’s car had just pulled up, and took that as an excuse to postpone their conversation for later so that he could help unload the massive array of bread rolls her parents always sent with her. Afterwards, Zuko’s uncle dropped him off, and then they were all requisitioned to help with the last of the meal prep. Sokka wasn’t able to get a moment alone with Zuko until almost an hour later, when the two of them had been shooed out of the kitchen after Sokka tripped over Appa and fell into Zuko, who then himself fell perilously close to the gravy bubbling on the stove.

They wound up in the living room together. Sokka draped himself over one end of the couch, and Zuko stood by the window. Outside, a thick grey blanket of clouds had amassed in the distance. Vaguely, Sokka remembered that the weather forecast had said something about snow on the horizon, and a vision came to him of getting into a heated snowball fight with Zuko, and sharing a blanket and some cocoa together afterwards. The pang that accompanied the image surprised him, so he pushed it aside.

He glanced back at Zuko, still standing all the way over by the window, and decided that was really too far away. He was struck with an idea.

“Zuko?”

“Hm?”

He was gazing out at the gathering clouds, brow furrowed.

“Come over here a moment.”

Sokka, sprawled across the couch, gestured to the space near where his head rested against one of the cushions. Something passed over Zuko’s face, and he glanced pointedly away.

“No.”

“C’mon, pleeeaaaaase.”

Sokka tried to assume his best puppy-eyes expression, but Zuko was still frowning.

“Forget it, Sokka.”

He didn’t sound mad, exactly, but there was an edge beneath his words that cut through Sokka like a knife.

“Okay,” he said. “I will.”

He scooted all the way over to the edge of the couch, pulling his knees up to his chest, and they were both quiet. Finally, Zuko turned his back to the window and took a tentative step towards him. After a moment, he sat gingerly down on the other end of the couch and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I’m just a little tired today.”

He looked tired, Sokka thought, but beneath that there were signs of a storm playing out inside, a shadow across his face that betrayed the eb and flow of anguish and frustration, and Sokka had to bite his lip to keep from asking about it.

Instead, he said, “If you think it’ll be too much for you, you don’t have to stay tonight. We’d all understand.”

Zuko thought about it for a moment, but then shook his head.

“No. I want to be here. I’m, uh.” He swallowed, and looked down at his hands, studying them carefully. “I’m really grateful to you—to everyone—for inviting me. I don’t think you know how much.”

Slowly, Sokka inched just a little closer, reaching out a hand without even thinking about it to rest on Zuko’s shoulder. Beneath his fingers, he felt Zuko tense and then relax.

“Do you want me to move?”

Zuko looked away, a strange note in his voice. “No.”

“I just—

Sokka drew his hand away again, dimly registering the regret his fingers felt at the motion, unsure of how to articulate what had suddenly overcome him.

“I’m not quite sure what to do with myself when I’m around you. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. I want to make you happy.”

“That’s what still amazes me,” said Zuko, quietly. “I can’t understand why.”

“Why not? Aren’t you allowed to be happy?”

“You don’t understand.”

Zuko turned the full force of his gaze on him, and Sokka felt all the air go out of his chest.

“I want to make you happy, too. I—

Just then, Katara and Aang walked into the room, midway through some conversation about how Suki’s pumpkin pies were turning out in the oven that Sokka would ordinarily have very much taken an interest in, and Zuko shifted away from him.

“Oh good,” Aang said, spotting them first. “Katara says you’re un-banished now.”

“I’m sure even you can’t screw up the salad,” she said, and beckoned them back towards the kitchen.

Even though Zuko was the only extra person at the table this year, dinner was an unusually lively scene. Come December, Sokka, Katara, and their dad would go and visit their family up north, while Aang would fly home for a couple weeks over break, but Thanksgiving for them was never some big production—just a meal and a few friends, a celebration of each other’s presence more than anything else.

As they all tucked into their first helpings, Hakoda turned to Zuko.

“We’re glad you could join us this year.”

“I’m glad to be here,” Zuko said, his spine very straight. Sokka elbowed him.

“Relax, he means it. My dad only looks like he could eat you alive, but really he’s a big softie.”

“Thank you, Sokka, for your considerate attention to my manly dignity.” But Hakoda smiled, and winked at Zuko.

“We’ve decided to adopt Zuko,” Toph declared, casting a wicked grin in his direction. “Like it or not, you’re stuck with us now.”

“And vice versa,” Katara sighed, but she, too, gave him something that came close to a smile.

Sokka remembered when he’d first approached his family with the idea of inviting Zuko to share their meal, sure that it would be met with the utmost skepticism by one party in particular, and Katara had surprised him by agreeing almost right away.

“So what made you change your mind about him?” he’d asked, later that night, when it was just the two of them left awake doing homework in the living room.

For a moment, Katara hadn’t answered him, to all appearances still absorbed in her chemistry textbook. And then, quietly, she’d said, “Have I been in the wrong this whole time?” She looked up at Sokka with a subdued expression. “I need you to tell me honestly.”

“What do you mean?”

“About Zuko. You’re starting to make me wonder if I’ve been too hard on him after all.”

Too taken aback to respond, Sokka had only gaped at her. After a pause, she continued.

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s taken me a lot of thinking to get to where I am, and I’m still not sure I’ve forgiven Zuko, if that’s something I’m even capable of. But seeing the two of you these past few weeks has made me reconsider. I think—this whole time I think I’ve been too eager not to look beyond the surface.”

They’d left it at that, but Sokka knew instinctively that his sister understood—about this new shift in his attitude towards Zuko, inexplicable and yet somehow profoundly necessary, about Zuko himself, more and less of an enigma now that he was no longer confined by the bonds of their shared past. Thanksgiving was only (in Katara’s own words, never mind the swear jar) a bullshit holiday, but even so, this year the gratitude Sokka felt was genuine.

Now, sitting across the table from him, Katara suddenly pointed out the window.

“Look.”

Snow was coming down in big, thick flakes. Hakoda turned on the TV to check the forecast just in time to hear the new blizzard warning go out.

“Seems like we’ll have to camp out for the evening.”

So that was what they did. After dinner, Suki and Toph called their parents, while Zuko called his uncle to make sure he’d gotten home from a friend’s house okay, and to inform him that he’d be spending the night at Sokka’s. Sokka couldn’t hear Uncle Iroh’s response to that, but whatever it was made Zuko blush and mutter an insult before hanging up.

They got sleeping bags out of the upstairs closet and spread them out next to each other on the floor of the living room, pushing aside the couches to make room for all six of them.

“I feel like I’m thirteen and at a slumber party again,” said Suki.

“We should tell ghost stories,” said Aang. His own attempt at a ghost story left everyone laughing too hard to continue, though, so instead they put a movie on in the background while they swapped increasingly ridiculous concepts for ghost story plotlines.

Suki, stretched out on Sokka’s right, leaned in and murmured, “So we never got to have that conversation earlier.”

Sokka glanced around. “Is now really the right time?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well—I mean, you wanted it to be a private conversation, right?”

“Then we’ll go somewhere else.”

“But I’m too lazy to get up.”

Sokka flopped back on his sleeping bag and tried to look like someone whose bones had all melted and rendered him incapable of movement (which, coincidentally, was probably not a bad ghost origin story).

Suki’s expression was immensely frustrated, but with a toss of her head she turned to join Katara and Toph’s debate on which fictional ghost was the biggest wimp. Sokka felt a stab of guilt, but the coward inside of him still wasn’t ready to face the implications of her concerned frown, or what such a serious tone of voice might suggest.

Eventually, the conversation wore down and somebody mustered the energy to turn off the Netflix autoplay. After that, Aang announced he was going to bed, so the rest of them followed suit. Sokka glanced back at Suki, but she’d already passed out—or she was still mad at him and faking it, which he probably couldn’t blame her for.

_I have to talk to you about something._

Sokka had seen enough teen movies to know what it meant when your girlfriend said something like that.

On his other side, Zuko tossed and turned for a while before he, too, settled into sleep. Sokka shifted so that he was facing him, compelled by a curiosity he couldn’t quite explain.

In sleep, Zuko looked so much more vulnerable than in the waking world—that was the cliché, wasn’t it? With all the tension gone out of his body, the hard lines of his face softened, his shoulders relaxed. Sokka, although half afraid that Zuko would stir and catch him looking, couldn’t find it in himself to tear his eyes away. Something was welling up inside of him, surging like an ocean tide. He felt out of breath, overcome by the fragility of the moment at hand, as though this were a dream or some other space removed, however briefly, from the ordinary progression of time. There was an ache in his chest that felt distinctly like yearning, though for what precisely, Sokka couldn’t have said.

Or—no, perhaps that wasn’t entirely accurate. He had the sense that he stood perched on the precipice of his own emotions, as if waiting for something (or someone) to push him over the edge.

Zuko’s fingers were resting next to his head, halfway between the pair of them. Slowly, Sokka stretched out a hand. He didn’t think _what am I doing?_ or _hey, it’s probably kind of weird to hold your friend’s hand while he’s sleeping if that’s not something the two of you usually do together_. (In his defense, he was already pretty sleepy himself, and he wasn’t sure what else to do with this new impulse inside of him.)

Sokka would swear that he had intended—if there was indeed intention behind any of his actions tonight—to only take Zuko’s hand for a second, just to try it out. But he must have been more tired than he’d realized, because sleep soon began to overtake him, and his muscles felt like lead. And as he drifted off, right at the moment when consciousness wanders between wakefulness and oblivion, he thought he felt Zuko’s fingers tighten around his.


	9. Chapter 9

Sokka didn’t realize he’d drifted off to sleep until he felt someone yank him up by the wrist.

“You ready to have that talk now?”

“Suki.” He groaned, falling back against his pillow. “It’s gotta be like, I don’t know, four in the morning?”

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out a shrug, and the flash of an unremorseful grin.

“You wouldn’t make time for me earlier, so this one’s on you.”

“I guess that’s fair.” He glanced around, and registered that the others were all still sleeping. “We should go somewhere else, though.”

Sokka’s bedroom was unoccupied, and far enough away from the living room that their voices wouldn’t carry, so that was where they went. As soon as he shut the door, he turned to Suki and steeled himself.

“Are you breaking up with me?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, but the question didn’t seem to faze her.

“That depends,” she said. “Do you want to break up?”

“Not really.”

“And what about Zuko?”

Sokka frowned. “What about him?”

“Sokka, I say this with all the goodwill and compassion in my heart: you’ve gotta figure out where your feelings are at.”

“Because…”

“Because you like him.”

Sokka let out a slow breath.

“Yeah,” he said, after a beat, “I guess I do.” A pause. “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” Suki said, “I’m happy for you. It just makes things a little more complicated for us going forward, which is why I wanted to talk to you.”

“So we are breaking up.”

“Like I said, not if you don’t want to. But it might be easier that way, for you and Zuko.”

“It won’t be easy either way.” Again he hesitated, and then, in a low voice, he said, “If I’m being honest, I don’t think I know what it means for us to not be together anymore.”

“I’m not so sure either,” Suki admitted, “but it’s worth a try. We don’t have to stop seeing one another, we just won’t be dating.” She paused. “Let’s look at it this way. What is it you really want?”

“I want you to be happy,” he said, without hesitation.

“Okay,” she said, “and I want you to be happy too. So what we need to think about is: will continuing to date really make that happen?”

She hesitated for a moment, and then pulled him in for a hug, bone-crushing as always, and Sokka felt himself relax into it. The familiarity—the _Suki_ -ness of it—was comforting. It was also, he realized, a thoroughly platonic sort of hug, stirring only thoughts of gratitude and friendship, and nothing else. He allowed himself to consciously imagine what it might feel like to hug Zuko (and, oh, had he been thinking about that subconsciously all this time?), which inspired a whole new sensation in the pit of his stomach, an ache that was a little more nerve-wracking than the ubiquitous butterflies. He pulled away.

“Alright,” he admitted, “I see your point.”

“In that case,” said Suki, shooting him a tentative but wry grin, “should I consider us officially broken up?”

“It sounds so bad when you say it like that,” Sokka groaned.

“Hmm. You’re not wrong, putting it that way does make the situation seem a little too severe. What would you say instead?”

“Our relationship is getting an upgrade from romantic partners to official best-friends-for-life?”

“I like that,” she said, smiling in earnest now. “Though I hope we were best-friends-for-life even before this.”

“Well, now it’s _official_.”

They sat in silence for a while, until Sokka sighed, and said, “All my fretting these past few weeks, and it turns out I’m just a himbo with a crush.”

“Sokka, I love you, but you’re way too much of a nerd to qualify as a himbo.”

“You love me?”

Suki rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, you dork. You’re my best friend, aren’t you?” She pointed in the direction of the living room. “Now go out there and make me proud.”

He saluted, and then yawned. “I think that last part is going to have to wait until the sun’s fully up.”

“That seems like a wise decision. Back to bed it is, then.”

They tiptoed back into the living room, where thankfully none of the others seemed to have woken up yet. Suki crawled back into her sleeping bag and blew Sokka a kiss before rolling over.

Sokka paused as he settled himself beneath his blankets to glance again at Zuko, lying next to him. A feeling of warmth washed over him, filling him with the sort of calm he hadn’t experienced in months. Probably he was going to flip out over these newly-discovered feelings in an hour or so when he woke up properly, but for the time being he was content to let himself get lost in the presence of Zuko next to him as he meandered his way towards sleep again.

Just then Zuko stirred, and slowly opened his eyes.

“Hey,” Sokka murmured. Zuko held his gaze.

“Hey,” he said, voice still gravelly with sleep, and the flutter Sokka felt somewhere in the vicinity of his chest was not at all unfamiliar, only this time he had a name for it.

“How was your night?”

“Your floor’s too hard.” Zuko shifted, but didn’t tear his gaze away. Sokka yawned again, and a faint smile etched itself across Zuko’s face.

“You’re up early.”

“That’s why I’m going back to bed.” Sokka scooted closer to him, unable to hold back a grin. “You should tell me a story or something, to help me sleep.”

Zuko raised his eyebrows. “Once upon a time in a far away kingdom there was a brainless fool named Sokka who didn’t know when to stop talking and let his friends rest.”

Sokka poked him. “Meanie.”

He decided that, since they were already lying so close together, he might as well inch towards Zuko a little more, and soak up some of the heat radiating off of him on such a chilly winter morning. So he shifted inwards, and Zuko sucked in a breath, close to his ear, and then, after a moment, stretched out his arm, so that Sokka’s head was resting against his bicep.

“You’re better than my blankets,” Sokka told him. He couldn’t see it, but he thought he could sense Zuko’s grin, just briefly.

He closed his eyes, melting a little into the presence of Zuko next to him. After a moment, he felt Zuko bend down and bury his face in his hair. Sokka’s heartrate kicked into overdrive, and he reached for Zuko’s hand, pulling it in so that Zuko’s arm was wrapped around him.

 _I could get used to this_ , he thought.

Zuko shifted away from him, but didn’t let go of his hand. It wasn’t long before he began to feel sleepy again, so Sokka let himself succumb to it, infinitely comfortable and completely at peace.

When he woke up, Zuko was gone.

* * *

Looking back on everything after the fact, Zuko should have realized that Ty Lee’s anniversary surprise party wasn’t going to go as planned from the evening’s first red flag, that being: when he showed up to the lake house owned by her family just outside of town, the evening’s illustrious locale, it turned out that only Mai and Ty Lee were coming, and no one else.

“I tried inviting some of our classmates,” Ty Lee said, “but I think most people are busy with their families. At least mine doesn’t mind me using this place for our party.”

It was the Saturday of their long weekend, cold enough outside to remind everyone that winter was truly on the way, though inside the lake house the electric fireplace had been turned on, and the walls were decked out in all the decorations befitting the occasion. With the setting sun bouncing off the snow outside the scene was really quite picturesque, although the serenity did nothing to quell Zuko’s trepidation.

There were three reasons, in no particular order, why he’d caved and decided to come despite his better judgement. The first was that Ty Lee had called and implored him one last time to make an appearance, which on its own wouldn’t have been enough to convince Zuko that, while Ty Lee meant well, this wasn’t still a very bad idea. But then Mai had called too, and admitted, in that flat and indifferent tone of hers, that she could maybe use the moral support, and he couldn’t deny he understood exactly where she was coming from. That was the second reason.

The third reason was Sokka.

Zuko had spent the past two days trying not to think too hard about Thanksgiving, unsure of whether or not to believe his gut instinct, or which option was worse.

There had been that moment in the living room on Thursday, and then, Friday morning, the sleeping bag debacle. He thought he might faintly remember another incriminating incident, hands clasped together in the night, but more likely that was just another silly dream of his. For the most part Sokka had initiated things, but Zuko had broken all the rules he’d drawn up for himself and played along, and his face burned, remembering. He couldn’t let himself be so careless again.

Holding hands, putting your arm around someone—those were innocent gestures, and could be written off as representing only friendship easily enough. In that case, Zuko’s actions might have been completely unwarranted and even repulsive to Sokka, a thoroughly unbearable prospect. But the second (and perhaps more likely) possibility was that Sokka, whether consciously or not, had acted on behalf of some fleeting attraction or curiosity, which Zuko had better not encourage any further, lest he give away the depth of his own feelings.

He felt a tap on his shoulder, and looked up to see Mai standing over him.

“You gonna help us finish setting everything up, or keep brooding into the fireplace?”

Ty Lee was outside, putting the finishing touches on a big welcome sign, so Zuko and Mai set about arranging the snacks. Mai kept glancing through the window and then pretending she hadn’t. When Zuko called her on it, she only sighed.

“You and me, Zuko.” She shook her head. “What is it with us and bubbly, oblivious extroverts?”

“Probably still a better combination than the two of us dating,” he pointed out. Mai made a face.

“Gross. I can’t believe we did that.”

Zuko almost asked, _Which of us has a better shot, do you think?_ , but stopped himself, because it made him think of Sokka’s eyes on him at Thanksgiving, which was a path he was resolutely not going to take himself down, and because it would be a pretty shitty thing to say as Mai’s unofficial moral support—this was Ty Lee’s anniversary party, after all.

Just then, Ty Lee dashed back in.

“Red alert! Azula is on her way.”

The sense of unease that had been burgeoning in the pit of Zuko’s stomach grew more difficult to smother. Mai shot him a look that, for her, almost passed as consoling.

“Not too late to go hide,” she murmured.

“And have you accuse me of being a coward for the rest of our lives? No thanks.”

Ty Lee put on some background music, and busied herself with fluffing pillows on the couch and fussing over the decorations. The wait was both eternal and over far too quickly—with no sense at all of how much time had really passed, Zuko saw Azula’s car pulling into the driveway.

“On second thought,” he said to Mai, “being called a coward for the rest of my life doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Now you really are too late.”

Azula took her time walking up the stairs to the front deck, examining the banner outside with what Zuko could tell even through the window was moderate suspicion. Ty Lee met her at the door.

“I’m so glad you could make it!”

But Azula looked past her to stare directly at Zuko.

“Well,” she said, slowly crossing her arms in front of her, “this is unexpected.”

Her voice was level, but there was something venomous lurking behind the surface of her tone. Zuko had been prepared for that, though.

“Hello to you too,” he said, and he really wasn’t trying to sound antagonistic, but old habits must die hard, because Azula frowned. She glanced around at her surroundings, and her frown grew deeper still.

Turning to Ty Lee, she said, “What is all of this?”

“Our anniversary party. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Ty Lee had long been a master of the art of cheeriness—if Zuko hadn’t grown up with her, he wouldn’t have noticed the uncertainty edging in behind her smile.

“Well,” said Azula, “on that front, certainly, you’ve succeeded.”

“I invited more people, but I think it’s okay that only the four of us could come. I thought we could have some snacks, watch a movie—you know, just hang out, like old times.”

“Like old times.”

Zuko’s sister shot him another dark look, but then she turned to Ty Lee, and put on one of her scarier smiles.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s watch a movie.”

Ty Lee let her choose, but she picked the first film suggested without so much as a second glance, which was just as well, because five minutes in she turned away from the screen towards Mai.

“I must say, I’m disappointed in you. I know Ty Lee has a soft heart, but I would’ve thought you’d be strong enough to stand up to my brother’s demands.”

Mai snorted. “What demands? You think either of us actually wanted to be here?”

Ty Lee shot her a surprised look. “What do you mean you don’t want to be here?”

“Look, my idea of a good time doesn’t exactly involve you making eyes at Azula while she picks the latest target for her wrath.”

“Then why did you agree to help me plan the party?”

“What can I say?” Mai shot her a bitter grin. “You’ve got me wrapped around your finger.”

“If you didn’t want to do this,” said Ty Lee quietly, “you should’ve said something earlier. I wouldn’t have made you go through with it.”

“You don’t get it,” Mai said, “I would’ve done it anyway.”

She was veering dangerously close to a confession. Zuko tried to shoot her a look that conveyed _I know I keep telling you to be honest about your feelings for Ty Lee, but maybe now isn’t the right time_ , but Mai either didn’t get the message or had elected to ignore him.

Ty Lee’s eyes were fixed on hers, as understanding slowly broke over her face. “What do you mean?”

“To speak in the language of our generation: newsflash, asshole, I’ve been in love with you the entire goddamn time.”

Her voice was as deadpan as ever, and in any other circumstance Zuko would have laughed. Instead, he held his breath, and scanned the room. Azula, predictably, looked livid, but Ty Lee’s face was frozen in an expression that was one part shock and one part an emotion that Zuko couldn’t hope to name. She looked at Mai as though it were through entirely new eyes.

“Is that true?”

“Would I have said anything if it wasn’t?”

This was probably the first time Zuko had ever seen Mai blush (and again it was a pity the mood was all wrong, or he could’ve had something to tease her about, for once, instead of the other way around). She held Ty Lee’s gaze for a moment, and then broke away.

“I’ll go now,” she said. As she grabbed her coat and walked towards the door, no one dared move. It was only as she yanked it open that Ty Lee unfroze.

“Wait.”

Mai turned back, and something passed over her face—fondness? Remorse?

“I’ll see you around,” she said, quietly, and then left.

For a long moment there was silence, and then Azula said, “Good riddance.”

Ty Lee turned to her, brow furrowing. “How can you say that?”

She gave a cool shrug. “We don’t need a snake in the grass. We’ll be better off just the two of us.”

But Ty Lee was frowning in earnest now. “Mai is my best friend. _Our_ best friend. Are you really so ready to just toss her aside?”

Azula frowned back. “I suppose she’s buttered you up with all her flirting. My mistake, I’ll admit. I should have seen that for what it was.”

“Whether she’s been flirting with me or not, that doesn’t have any bearing on the fact that I care about her. And about you, too.”

“Really?” Azula arched an eyebrow. “I’m rapidly beginning to doubt that.”

Ty Lee made an expression of helpless frustration. “Of _course_ I care. I planned this party to show you how much you mean to me, and because I wanted us to have a nice night together with our friends.”

“I wouldn’t call him my friend.” Azula jerked her head in Zuko’s direction. “I thought we had an agreement, Ty Lee.”

“I know,” she said, quietly, “and I wouldn’t have broken that agreement if it wasn’t important. But I—

Her voice broke, and Zuko glanced away, wishing more than ever now that he was somewhere else and not intruding on this moment.

“—I’m worried about you, Azula. Mai won’t say anything, but I know she is too.”

“You’re the one who’s worrying me,” said Azula, voice low and even. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you’ve lost your mind.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I know you’ll never admit to anything, but if you don’t then I can’t do anything to help you.”

“I don’t need your help,” Azula scoffed.

Ty Lee was silent a long time. Finally, she said, “If that’s what you believe, then I guess I can’t do anything to change it. Maybe I should have known that all along.”

“I can forgive you for that,” said Azula, “if you promise never to bring it up again.” She offered a small smile—not as a white flag, but in the manner of one giving a carrot to a particularly stubborn mule after the stick had no effect. “What do you say? You can come home with me tonight, and we can even watch one of these terrible movies you picked out, if you like.”

But Ty Lee shook her head. “I can’t just let this go. If you won’t accept help from me, then maybe someone else can break through to you. I can’t bring myself to try anymore.”

“What is it you’re trying to say?” There was a warning note in Azula’s voice, but Ty Lee ignored it, and spoke in a quiet voice.

“You mean more to me than almost anyone else in the world. But you’ve always had too much power over me, Azula.” She shrugged helplessly. “If I don’t leave you now, I might never be brave enough to do it.”

“So now you’re breaking up with me twenty minutes into our anniversary party? What a vicious sense of irony you’ve developed.”

“I’m not breaking up with you, I’m taking a break, before worrying over you wrenches my heart in half.”

She turned her head, but not before Zuko saw how watery her eyes were. He stepped towards her.

“Hey,” he whispered, “you go. I’ll clean things up.”

“Oh, really, you don’t have to—

“I can handle it. I mean it.”

His sister glared at the pair of them in suspicion. Ty Lee threw her arms around him, before casting one last desperate look at Azula and flying out through the front door. Zuko watched her go. Damage control had never been one of his strengths—he tended to veer closer to emotional arson. And yet—

And yet, after he’d moved in with his uncle, and nearly everyone from his former life had stopped speaking to him, he’d given up hope of ever making amends with his past. He’d set his sights wholly on the future, not sure what it contained would be any better, or if he could ever prove himself worthy of friendship and laughter and all the hallmarks of an ordinary life.

But even after Azula started so pointedly giving him the cold shoulder, Mai and Ty Lee hadn’t been able to bring themselves to follow her lead, no matter her powers of persuasion. Their scheming this semester, disastrous though the end result had turned out to be, was proof enough of that. He owed it to both of them to do what he could to make things right. On some level, perhaps, he even owed it to Azula.

As if she’d sensed his thoughts, Azula turned to him.

“Well? Aren’t you going to leave to?”

“Not this time,” he said.

She tossed her head. “I could order you to get out of my sight. My security detail is only a phone call away.”

“We need to talk, Azula.”

“What makes you think we have anything worth saying to one another?”

“Ty Lee thought so.”

She fixed him with a fierce scowl. “That little traitor. I never believed in keeping your enemies closer, but it turns out that’s what I’ve been doing all along.”

“You see,” Zuko said, “that’s your whole problem. Ty Lee isn’t your enemy now just because she’s not acting the way you want her to. She cares about you.”

“She sure has a funny way of showing it.”

“Maybe that’s true.” Cautiously, Zuko sat down again across from her. Azula cut him a sharp look.

“And what about you? Are you going to start claiming you care now?”

“I guess it turns out I’m not willing to believe you’re a lost cause.”

She snorted. “I should be the one telling you that.”

Zuko raised an eyebrow. “I thought you’d given up on me already.”

“You gave up on us. There’s a difference.”

“I would’ve looked at it that way once. I don’t anymore.”

“Of course,” Azula sneered, “you and your pitiful freedom. Congratulations, now you can live out the rest of your life scrubbing other people’s dirty dishes in that godforsaken tea shop and being too much of a pushover to say no when your crush’s sister asks you to perform in her mediocre excuse for a play. What a touching high school experience.”

Zuko decided not to dwell on the word “crush,” or on the idea that Mai might’ve ratted on him (though his sister had lots of informants, so theoretically it could’ve been anyone). Instead, he said, “You’re right. It’s far from the glamorous life I felt I was owed when we were younger. But wake up, Azula. That life is a lie, and it always has been. All our father ever did was try to mold us into obedient miniature versions of himself, and now you’re following in his footsteps.”

“Oh, has someone been taking Psych 101 at the community college?”

“Textbook deflecting.”

“Fine. You want to get into this now? Then let’s get into it. You’re a pathetic weakling.”

“And you’re off your game if that’s the best you’ve got.”

The less petty part of Zuko’s brain reminded him that, much as he wanted to, he wasn’t actually here to swap insults with Azula. He sighed.

“Look, I’m sorry, let’s just stop this. We’re only playing into our father’s hand when we argue.”

Now it was Azula’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“Come on, you know he’s always pitted us against one another. But somehow you always chose his side.”

“And Mom always chose yours.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” Azula wore her usual haughty expression, but there was an odd tremor beneath her voice. “They why did she leave?”

Zuko froze at the words, turning them over in his head carefully. After a beat, he said, “She left both of us. That’s something we have in common.”

Briefly, Azula looked like she was going to keep pushing back against him, but then she sighed.

“So what is it you want out of this little chat, Zuko? For me to rebel against our father and abandon my future, like you?”

“I just want you to be honest with me. And with yourself.” He paused, and then said, “If you’d like I can start by being honest with you. I’m sorry. I should’ve looked out for you more. And you should have looked out for me.”

For a long moment, Azula was silent. Finally, she said, “Maybe you’re right. It’s a little late to do anything about that now, though.”

“Why?”

“Look at us, Zuko. We’re almost adults by now, and we can barely stand each other. What makes you think one conversation is going to change that?”

“It probably won’t. But maybe this doesn’t have to end here.”

“I’m not going to start hanging out with you just because Mai and Ty Lee want nothing to do with me anymore,” said Azula.

“It’s not like you have a lot of options,” said Zuko (earning him a glare he probably deserved), “but I’m not asking you to hang out with me. You can start by not giving me the silent treatment.”

She heaved a lengthy sigh, but said, “Fine. Ignoring you completely was too melodramatic, anyway.”

She left soon after, and Zuko took his time cleaning up the lake house. He took down the decorations that Ty Lee had so painstakingly put up, careful not to tear them, and packed the leftover snacks into a grocery bag, figuring his uncle wouldn’t mind the leftovers. By the time he locked up it was already getting late, but he didn’t really feel like company, so he walked to the nearest bus stop instead of phoning for a ride.

There was, Zuko had learned, a certain kind of relief in total disaster. Walking away from the lake house, he felt not unlike he had walking away from his father a year ago, though this time with less guilt. Back then, the things he’d been afraid of all his life had finally come to pass—he was disgraced and rejected, permanently unable to meet his family’s expectations. And yet, leaving home on his own terms had provided him with a sort of clarity, a new lens through which to view the past, and having survived his trial by fire, he’d found something of a fresh start in the ashes of his old life. In the same way, the powder keg of tension that had been building between him and Azula, and between Azula and her friends, had resulted in an entirely predictable explosion, but in its wake, they, too, could start anew. In some odd way, perhaps, the stalemate between the four of them had been in need of a controlled burn.

Even so, he tried texting Mai when he got home. She didn’t respond. There was a message from Sokka which, with a stab of guilt, he ignored, and he was about to put his phone on silent when another notification popped up on the screen.

 **Ty Lee (10:14):** _I wanted to apologize for tonight. I never should’ve tried so hard to talk you into coming, you were right to be wary._

He hesitated over the message, weighing his words.

 **Zuko (10:18):** _It’s okay._

 **Zuko (10:19):** _Not that I’m doing anything like this again, but you might’ve had the right idea. Azula and I actually talked for a while after you left, and she’s agreed to start speaking to me again, at least_

He thought that would be the end of it, but a few minutes later his phone buzzed again.

 **Ty Lee (10:26):** _Is she still mad?_

For a while, Zuko wasn’t sure how to answer that. He settled on the truth.

 **Zuko (10:30):** _Yeah. She won’t be forever, though._

 **Zuko (10:31):** _I’m taking care of it_

 **Ty Lee (10:31):** _You don’t have to do that._

 **Zuko (10:33):** _Maybe I owe you one after all these years._

 **Zuko (10:34):** _But if it’s really eating you up, you can take me for coffee sometime after you’ve finished the ice cream and bad romcom binge_

 **Zuko (10:34):** _(don’t tell my uncle)_

 **Ty Lee (10:35):** _I’d like that 😊_

 **Ty Lee (10:35):** _Thank you, Zuko. Really._

The next week at school, he ate lunch by himself. So did Mai and Azula. Ty Lee, he noticed, had cast her lot with a group of cheerleaders, but even from a distance he could tell she was less animated than usual.

Sometime during the middle of the week, Suki caught him as he was heading back to school after his math lecture. He didn’t notice her at first, which prompted her to shake her head at him when he nearly rammed right into her.

“You’re brooding again,” she said, instead of hello.

“It was a long weekend,” he said. She gave him a hard stare.

“Looks like it.” Her tone was as blunt as ever, but there was something sympathetic beneath. She fell into step beside him. “I won’t ask.”

“Thanks.” He paused. “So are you here because you’re still scheming to set me up with your boyfriend?”

“ _Ex_ -boyfriend,” said Suki, with a smirk at his expression. “I thought I’d do you the courtesy of letting you know.”

The cold weight of guilt settled in the pit of Zuko’s stomach. “He didn’t—

“ _I_ was the one to suggest a breakup, and before you start blaming yourself, it wasn’t just because of you. Honestly, we were inevitably going to have that conversation before long anyway, since we’ll both have to leave for college next year.” She flashed him a wry smile. “That’s your problem now, though.”

That did not make Zuko feel particularly better. Suki seemed to notice this, because her tone softened, and she said, “It doesn’t really have to be a problem. I find if I just let myself relax about these things and not set so much stake in the outcome, it relieves a lot of the stress.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“True.” She nudged him. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask, how do you get here from the community college? It’s a little too far to walk.”

“One of the buses runs through campus. It’s not too much of a hassle.”

“Fair enough. So how come you can’t drive, anyway?”

He blinked at her. “I’m gay.”

She laughed. “Sokka will be thrilled.”

“Will you—can not tell him about all this?”

She considered him carefully, and then nodded slowly. “I guess you’re right, that’s not my job. But Zuko—

She stopped. “Look, don’t come at me, but I know opening up to people about your feelings isn’t something you’re too thrilled about doing. But I promise that whatever happens, Sokka won’t judge you for it, and neither will any of the rest of us. Even Katara wouldn’t stoop that low.”

He was sorely tempted to believe her, but a much deeper part of him couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding at the prospect of talking things through with Sokka, and not just because he’d seen what had happened with Mai over the weekend. He was old enough to recognize when something was too good to be true.

Later that night, while halfheartedly studying for his finals, Zuko was emptying the drawers of his desk in search of a stray sheet of notes and came across his copy of the polaroid from homecoming. It was the second or third one they’d taken, and he was standing off to the side, giving a smile that was only genuine because of Sokka next to him, from his goofy pose apparently trying his best to get him to do just that.

If Zuko were the sort of person who believed that the universe could send him a sign, he would’ve thought that perhaps some higher cosmic entity was nudging him in the direction of Suki’s advice. As it was, Zuko had gotten quite good at ignoring destiny ever since he’d given up on his own, and he certainly wasn’t going to start setting any stock in it now. The future was in his hands, which meant he was perfectly capable of letting this whole thing with Sokka blow over while he tried to figure out what to do about Azula and her friends.

(And if that statement sounded a little too much like he was only trying to convince himself, well, that was nobody’s business but his own.)

* * *

Before he could do anything else, Sokka’s first post-breakup order of business was to tell Katara about his feelings for Zuko. He didn’t want her to be surprised with the information in case he (or Suki) let it slip in front of the others—and that was not altogether unlikely, given that their friends would probably demand a reason for the split, and Katara most of all.

All the same, making his feelings known to his sister was easier said than done, not in the least because Sokka hoped to live to breath a sigh of relief after the semester was over and he could finally catch a break, no matter how much he wasn’t looking forward to his finals. Katara had only just started to warm up to Zuko, and now Sokka was probably about to ruin that. But the alternative—not telling her and then surprising her with the aftermath, whatever that ended up being—was infinitely worse.

That was how he found himself standing outside her door, late one night during homework hours, when he was pretty sure the rest of their family were already in bed.

He heard Katara’s voice call from the other side of the door.

“Sokka, I know you’re out there, I can feel that nervous energy all the way through the walls.”

He opened the door and took a tentative step inside. Katara was sprawled on her bed, chemistry textbook and a variety of old assignments spread out in front of her.

“Are you studying for finals already?”

“What do you mean already? The exam’s in, like, two and a half weeks, and I still have _Hamlet_ to worry about.”

The mention of Hamlet made Sokka think of Zuko, which reminded him of why he’d come to hassle his sister in the first place.

“I actually wanted to talk to you about that,” he said. “Well, not about that, but about, uh…”

Katara shot him an uncannily perceptive look. “About Zuko?”

“Yeah.” Sokka paused, and then decided he might as well cut straight to the point. “So I, well, I’ve kind of figured out I like him now, which sounds weird, but Suki and I decided to ‘consciously uncouple’ or whatever you call it, so I’m thinking of asking him out, and I need to know you’re cool with that first.”

Katara just stared at him. Sokka could hear his heart pounding in the silence, so he said, “It could be worse. Like remember when you had a crush on Je—

“Sokka, if you finish that sentence I will personally make sure there isn’t a square inch of you left to ask Zuko on a date.”

“C’mon, Katara, we’re scientists, use the metric system.”

She hurled a pillow at him, and he only just managed to dodge out of the way in time. He put his hands up in surrender.

“Sorry, not helping.” He paused, lowering his arms, and hazarded a step closer. “So…are you…I mean, well, what do you think?”

She looked him over, and then scooted to the side so he could come sit next to her. Heartbeat still ringing in his ears, Sokka obliged.

“If you want the honest truth,” she said, “I’m not actually very surprised.”

“How? Even _I_ didn’t see this coming.”

“Yes, but—

There was a smile playing on her lips, so she must not be too annoyed with him, although Sokka suspected it was at his expense. He poked her.

“But?”

“Well, remember when you and Suki first got together, and you weren’t even sure the two of you were really a couple until you’d already been on, like, three dates?”

“No fair,” he said, “that was forever ago, I was young and inexperienced in the ways of love.”

“I’m just saying, you’re not always the most aware person when it comes to this sort of thing.”

“Don’t make me bring up the J-word again.”

She shoved him, cheeks going scarlet. “That was middle school. _Middle school._ Ancient history by now.”

“I’m still never gonna let you live it down.”

“In that case,” she said, “then I reserve the right to tease you mercilessly about Zuko at every opportunity.”

He leapt up. “So that means I have your blessing?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Sokka, this is the twenty-first century. You’re not some Jane Austen hero asking for my daughter’s hand in marriage.”

“Yeah, but…you are my sister. I know how hard it was for you just to accept Zuko into our friend group in the first place.”

“That’s true.” She paused, and then shrugged. “Well. I think your taste is pretty bizarre, but as long as your feelings don’t get in the way of Zuko’s opening night debut, I guess you’ve got my support.”

He flung his arms around her. “Thanks, Katara.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She returned the hug, and then batted him aside so she could get back to her chemistry work.

Now that he had Katara’s grudging approval—even if she was right and he didn’t need it—a major weight had risen from Sokka’s chest. This was quickly replaced, however, by the moderate concern that he had no real idea about Zuko’s preferences. He himself had been fairly open about his bisexuality for years now, but Zuko was so private Sokka had no idea about his inclination in any particular direction (even if he had his theories—the minimal theater knowledge he’d absorbed from Katara was enough for him to recognize that Hamlet was in no way straight, no matter what leading Shakespeare scholars liked to claim). Suki, the traitor, knew more than she was letting on, but she kept going on about having given her word not to say anything, which was bullshit, because she could be a total gossip when she wanted to be.

“I thought you were supposed to be my friend,” Sokka told her, after he’d pestered her all the way through another lunch period. (Zuko was, fortunately, absent. He’d been skipping a lot of their lunches lately.)

Suki rolled her eyes at him affectionately. “Were you this annoying while we were dating?”

“Oh no, he was definitely worse,” said Katara, and she and Suki high-fived. Sokka let out the most world-weary sigh he could muster.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” said Toph. “So you’re into Zuko now. Just go ask him out.”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

“Because! He’ll turn me down, or laugh at me, or I’ll scare him off, or maybe he says yes but then Azula finds out and comes to eat me alive.”

Toph cracked her knuckles. “I can take her. What do you think, Katara, Suki?”

“The Sokka Defense Squad is on standby,” Suki affirmed.

“Hey,” said Aang, “how come you didn’t ask me, Toph? I want to join!”

Sokka could have grumbled that it was very unmanly to be treated like a damsel in distress by his entire friend group (who, okay, probably were more competent than him), but he actually felt weirdly touched.

“That doesn’t solve the first three scenarios, though.”

“Well first of all,” said Katara, “he’s not going to laugh at you, because Zuko is incapable of human enjoyment.”

“That is patently untrue and you know it.”

She ignored him and continued. “And second of all, as long as you don’t go too overboard with things, you’re not going to scare him off, he’ll probably be flattered. And if he’s mean about turning you down, well, he’ll have me to answer to.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about on that front,” Suki said.

Sokka threw himself down across the table in front of her. “Suki please, I’m begging you, tell me your forbidden knowledge.”

“Not a chance. This is the most fun I’ve had in months.”

But the real problem with confessing his feelings to Zuko turned out to have less to do with Sokka’s own hesitation, and more to do with finding a quiet moment alone with him in the first place. At first, Sokka thought this was a coincidence. Dress rehearsals for the winter play had started up the Monday after Thanksgiving break, so there were very legitimate reasons for Zuko to be too busy to pay him any attention. But the week passed, and he still hadn’t gotten so much as a text from him (though admittedly, Sokka was usually the one to initiate those conversations, often with a bad meme that elicited some colorful vocabulary in response). And he continued to skip lunch periods, instead of sitting at what had become their regular table. Aang, too, thought something seemed off when the two of them met for tutoring that Thursday.

“He didn’t scowl at any of my jokes. Something’s definitely up.”

But the real moment that solidified the sinking feeling in Sokka’s stomach that Zuko might, in fact, want nothing to do with him came when the pair of them finally passed one another in the hall, midway through the Friday after Thanksgiving, and Zuko turned the other way and pretended he hadn’t seen him. Aang had been right.

Sokka spent the whole weekend coming up with increasingly preposterous (but still totally convincing) hypotheses as to why Zuko had suddenly decided to start ignoring him, and resolved to come back to school on Monday ready to demand his attention and ask him what was up.

That proved to be a more difficult plan to execute than Sokka had anticipated, though—Zuko had a remarkable talent for disappearing when he didn’t want to be found. It was only after the final bell rang that day and Sokka turned around the corner of a rapidly emptying hallway near the science classrooms that he spotted Zuko deep in conversation with Azula. Sokka, glancing towards the pair to make sure neither of them had caught sight of him, inched closer.

“…you figured out a plan yet for dealing with your situation?” Zuko was saying. Azula tossed her head.

“I’m not apologizing. At least not until both of them do.”

Zuko murmured something Sokka didn’t catch, and Azula said, “Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Suddenly she frowned, and looked past her brother to stare directly at Sokka.

“Zuko, one of your little nerdlet friends is doing a bad job of eavesdropping on us.”

He wheeled around, eyes widening and then narrowing again as he caught sight of Sokka. Not quite knowing what else to do, Sokka waved.

“We need to talk.”

“I’m busy talking to Azula right now,” Zuko said.

Azula, for her part, rolled her eyes. “I was getting bored of this conversation anyway.” She gave him a light shove in Sokka’s direction. “Take him off my hands.”

Okay, so that was one more thing Sokka could add to the list of everything that had totally come out of left field this year— _Azula_ , of all people, being the reason he finally got a chance to catch Zuko alone. Although that chance was rapidly fading—Zuko had already started walking in the opposite direction.

“Wait.”

He hesitated, and turned to look at Sokka, though he didn’t come any closer.

“Are you mad at me?”

Zuko frowned. “No.”

“I haven’t seen you in more than a week.”

“Like I said, I’m busy.”

“With Azula? I thought the two of you weren’t speaking to each other.”

“We are now.” Zuko started to walk away again. Sokka chased after him.

“So that’s it? You go back to your old friends and won’t have anything to do with me anymore?”

“ _No_.”

Zuko whirled around to glare at him—an expression which was both truly formidable and kinda hot. ( _Not helping!_ the logical side of Sokka’s brain reminded him.)

“Then why won’t you talk to me?”

A look of consternation flitted across Zuko’s face, and something else too—trepidation, maybe.

“Okay,” he said, after a pause, “I’ll talk to you.” He glanced around as a few freshman wandered into view at the other end of the hallway. “Not here, though.”

Most of the classrooms were either already in use or locked up for the evening, so they wound up behind the gym, under what Sokka swore was the same set of bleachers they’d stood beneath all the way back on homecoming night. The weather had warmed up the past couple days, but it was still a lot chillier outdoors than in. Sokka folded his arms, as much for warmth as to show his dissatisfaction.

“So spill it. What’s your deal?”

“What’s _your_ deal?” Zuko countered, frowning again.

“I don’t have a _deal_. I’m mad that you suddenly don’t want anything to do with me and won’t even bother to tell me why.”

Zuko bit his lip, glancing down at the floor.

“You know why,” he said, quietly.

Sokka felt his stomach drop, heard the blood rushing in his ears. “Is this because of what happened at Thanksgiving? If you’re not interested, or straight or whatever, then just tell me.”

Zuko didn’t answer right away, which only served to exacerbate his frustration.

“You’re such a complete jerkass. I finally figure out I like you and now you won’t even give me the time of day.”

“It’s not that,” said Zuko, quietly. Sokka glared at him.

“So then what the hell is it?”

Zuko stuck out his chin, a familiar stubborn gleam in his eyes. “I won’t let myself be toyed around with. Even if you think you like me now, you’ll only end up going back to Suki or someone else before long.”

“And you really think I’d do that?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“If that’s what you believe, then you don’t know me at all.”

“You’re right,” said Zuko, “we don’t know each other. A few months can’t erase the years of history we have behind us.”

“Maybe not. But I’d hoped—” Sokka faltered, and then pressed on. “I thought we were friends, Zuko. Or is that something you want to go back on too?”

“No.” Zuko glanced away, and looked as though he was about to say more, but then he stopped himself. At last he sighed, and said, “If you want the honest truth, it’s getting harder for me to be around you lately, because—

“Because what?”

He spoke in a low voice. “Because I’ve had feelings for you for so long now, and if you’re not actually serious about this I think it would cut me to pieces.”

Sokka was about to fire back a retort when his brain caught up with the words that had just come out of Zuko’s mouth.

“You…have feelings?”

Zuko glared at him. “Oh, thanks for that.”

“For me,” Sokka clarified.

“Well,” he mumbled, cheeks reddening, “You don’t have to make a big deal out of it.”

“Are you kidding?” Sokka laughed—he couldn’t help it, a giddiness had sprung up in his chest to replace the sinking feeling in his stomach. Zuko’s expression had morphed into one of mild concern, so Sokka took him by the shoulders. “That’s like, the biggest possible deal. This whole time I’ve thought you were avoiding me for the opposite reason.”

“I wasn’t—

Zuko caught Sokka’s face and switched tracks mid-sentence, looking a little sheepish, and maybe also a little apprehensive.

“Okay, yeah,” he admitted, “I was avoiding you. I just don’t—I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

“That’s a hard way to live.”

Under Sokka’s hands, Zuko shrugged. “Maybe.”

There was a wariness in his eyes that made Sokka’s chest restrict again, and he pulled Zuko in a little closer.

“Please, get your hopes up. I’ll do everything I can not to let you down.” He paused a moment, and then said quietly, “You can trust me.”

“So you—” Zuko leaned in closer, as though instinctually, so that they were now only a few inches apart. “You really are serious?”

“Uh, yeah dude, I broke up with my girlfriend for you.”

“Don’t remind me.” And Zuko closed the remaining space between them to bury his face in Sokka’s shoulder. For his part, Sokka thought his heart might’ve actually leapt out of his chest. “I really didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Slowly, Sokka slid his hands from Zuko’s shoulders to his back, wrapping his arms around him, in awe of exactly how much imagination paled in comparison to reality.

“Hey, Suki’s living her best life now that she has free reign to keep tormenting me _and_ flirt with the all the captains of the opposing volleyball teams during the playoffs. I hadn’t realized it, but I think we were both ready to move our relationship squarely back into the ‘friendship’ category.”

Zuko pulled away, though not out of Sokka’s arms entirely. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to avoid you.”

“I guess that’s my karma for avoiding Suki on Thanksgiving. Just—please talk to me next time, okay? If there’s something bothering you, I want to know what that is.”

“It’s just—

Zuko looked conflicted for a moment, and then drew in a deep (if shaky) breath, and continued.

“I can’t really wrap my head around how everything’s played out. A year ago, you never would’ve even spoken to me, and you’d have been right not to. I know we’ve spent this whole semester moving on, but I never dared to think—well, I suppose I’m just waiting to wake up from it all, in my old room in my father’s house.”

“Dream or no,” said Sokka, “I already made my decision months ago. I’m in your corner now, so you’re not getting rid of me that easily.” He shot Zuko a sly grin. “Though, just to make sure you’re awake, I could pinch you.”

“Don’t you dare,” said Zuko, but he was smiling back, now. Sokka nudged him,

“So. If I’m remembering correctly, just a few moments ago, you said, and I quote, ‘ _I’ve had feelings for you for so long now_.’ Care to elaborate?”

“Your impression of me is terrible.”

“That’s not answering my question.”

For a while, Zuko was quiet. Then he said, “I don’t really know when it started. I only know that one day, before we’d even gotten to know each other, I looked over at you, and I thought, _oh_. Something inside me just clicked into place.”

Catching sight of the expression on Sokka’s face, he smirked, though his cheeks had gone red again.

“I guess your mouth does have an off button after all.”

“How can you say something so romantic one moment and so insulting the next?”

Zuko shrugged. “Better get used to it I guess. That is if you—I mean, if we…”

Sokka took his hand, and squeezed it. “I can get used to it.”

They stood in silence for a while, hands linked, until suddenly Sokka was struck by a new thought.

“Wait a minute. Is _that_ why you called me when your uncle was in the hospital? Because you like me?”

“I called you because I didn’t have that many options,” said Zuko hotly, though he wouldn’t meet Sokka’s eyes. “But…it’s possible you weren’t far from my mind that night.”

“ _Hah_ , I knew it.”

“Liar.” Zuko grinned at him. His earlier apprehension was gone, and now Sokka thought he looked quite happy, if perhaps in a cautious sort of way.

“Hey,” he said, “you managed to squeeze a confession out of me, but you’re still dancing around the subject of your own feelings, despite the fact that _you’re_ the one who dumped your girlfriend for me. I think that demands an explanation.”

Sokka considered it a moment.

“I don’t know. It’s like—okay, this isn’t a great analogy, but it’s like everyone’s heart is a puzzle. All of the relationships in my life—with my friends, with family, with Suki—they’re knit together inside of me in different ways, like different puzzle pieces. And then I started to get to know you this year, and it turned out you fit me in a whole new way I hadn’t considered before. For a while I didn’t see that for what it was, but over the break I finally realized exactly what sort of space it was you’d filled.”

“That being?”

Just then, the back door of the gymnasium swung open, and a familiar face popped into view.

“There you are.” From the doorway, Katara shot Sokka an all-too-knowing look, before calling over to Zuko. “Hey Hamlet, rehearsal starts in five minutes.”

“Can’t he be late?” Sokka implored his sister.

“No,” said Katara and Zuko in unison. Sokka looked askance at Zuko, who laughed.

“Let’s face it,” he said, “I need all the practice I can get. You aren’t the only thing I’ve had to worry about lately, you know.”

Katara was still waiting on them, but Sokka chanced a guess anyway. “You mean whatever’s going on with Azula?”

Zuko’s expression sobered for just a moment. “I’ll fill you in later. Wait for me?”

“Always.” Sokka grinned at him. “But you owe me more of your uncle’s tea.”

“Deal.”

Sokka watched him leave with Katara, marveling over the two of them, already deep in conversation about something Shakespearian and totally over his head. It wasn’t just his own life that Zuko had unexpectedly fit into—in a matter of months he’d somehow become an indispensable part of their group, and Sokka couldn’t imagine going back to the way things were before the start of the semester, when none of this would’ve been possible. He was glad they’d all finally come to their senses.

Tomorrow, his friends would probably wrangle all the juicy details from him, and tease him mercilessly about it while Zuko blushed again, which would make Sokka blush too, and that of course would only exacerbate the gleeful ridicule. He’d also have to face up to all the tougher questions that always presented themselves at the start of something new—what it might mean for him and Zuko to be together (if being together was really what they both wanted), what it meant to be with someone who wasn’t Suki, what ghosts might still linger between the three of them.

Today, though, Sokka was going to sit in on the _Hamlet_ rehearsal—from the back row, so Director Pakku couldn’t yell at him about it—and then, over mugs of Uncle Iroh’s tea and a few neglected homework sheets, for good measure, he and Zuko were going to make up for lost time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am, sauntering in over a month late with a new update (hopefully at least parts of it were worth the wait?)  
> My life is a lot less hectic now than it has been the past few months, so I should have this thing finished up in no time. (For whatever reason Ao3 won't let me update the chapter count, but there's still only 10 chapters total.)  
> Thanks for sticking with me!


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